Speaker 1: Disclaimer. We'd like to know before the start of this
Speaker 1: interview that the opinions about to be expressed by the
Speaker 1: guest of tonight's Getting Salty Experience Podcast are that of
Speaker 1: the guest and do not directly or necessarily reflect the
Speaker 1: views of the host of the Getting Salty Experience Podcast.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Getting Salty Experience Podcast.
Speaker 3: Hello, oh, certainly, whoa what happens that we'll do this?
Speaker 4: Guy?
Speaker 5: Hey, hey, don't, hey, don't hey, there.
Speaker 6: We go, Everything's gonna happen. Scoops, I did that?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 6: I think you're pushing the buttons. I don't know what anyway, Sorry,
Speaker 6: that's my favorite.
Speaker 3: That's was maybe putting roughly on the big screen like that.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, mixture of the boat trip gons no kidding.
Speaker 6: I'm sorry. I had to take my dad, who uh.
Speaker 6: As you guys know, he suffered a little bit from dementia,
Speaker 6: So I don't know how many games I have kind
Speaker 6: of went with him.
Speaker 4: So what game do you go to?
Speaker 3: A Yankee game?
Speaker 6: The Yankees were in town when they got swept along
Speaker 6: by the Marlins right first time, when the franchise history
Speaker 6: beat him up.
Speaker 4: I was like, Oh yeah, I just just tell me
Speaker 4: the Yankees won. Maybe you won't not.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he was, he's.
Speaker 4: Still he's not that bad. I'm just saying, you don't.
Speaker 6: Know, but it's legit.
Speaker 5: A big line. You're talking to Gonzo, you know what
Speaker 5: I mean?
Speaker 4: Like what that was a good turn.
Speaker 3: Now you know who turned out Bob Morris Captain Rescue one,
Speaker 3: Captain twenty.
Speaker 7: Truck another another for the fourth annual Perfect weather again,
Speaker 7: I mean perfect You.
Speaker 6: Remember last year's debacle and it turned out to be beautiful.
Speaker 4: Evans opened up.
Speaker 3: And then all of a sudden the rainbows came out
Speaker 3: with Morris. Broke said he might he might even be
Speaker 3: interested in doing the show. It's such a good time.
Speaker 6: So he actually, Frank Someton sent me a good pictures.
Speaker 6: It looks like you get. I think it's Tilly Ronnie,
Speaker 6: a bunch of guys with cruise on it. I could
Speaker 6: pull up. There's a female and I don't know who
Speaker 6: this is.
Speaker 3: Let me say, I'm gonna see that.
Speaker 5: That's my daughter.
Speaker 6: Oh that god, Well there you go.
Speaker 3: Old rookie family came was beautiful girls in a bit.
Speaker 6: All right, Well, then there you go.
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 5: He looks like Tilly a little bit.
Speaker 3: We're gonna play the membership We just Louis and I
Speaker 3: Louis did, and I just I'm gonna say that Louise
Speaker 3: said it.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: We're gonna randomly draw two members from the Love the Idea,
Speaker 3: two members and then getting a special invite to the boat.
Speaker 3: We're gonna put it in some kind of program and
Speaker 3: it kicks your name out. We're gonna get two guys
Speaker 3: and they're gonna go on the boat cruise next year.
Speaker 6: So I actually I will get with my niece who
Speaker 6: does thirsty bartenders little plug. Yeah, uh, well has a
Speaker 6: system that can draw us those nice little names. Oh,
Speaker 6: we'll add to that.
Speaker 5: All right.
Speaker 4: Cool.
Speaker 5: I like the input, John, we got fifty. We just
Speaker 5: went over fifty subscribers.
Speaker 3: Fifty subscribers. Beautiful guys. Play a commercial really quick.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, you know what, let's go here we
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Speaker 3: That Mike Velvet Velvet, I tell you what is it?
Speaker 3: Let's get the two quick commercials. We had the Jimmy
Speaker 3: Guinea on the bows on the cruise, so let's play
Speaker 3: his commercial all right, here we go.
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Speaker 3: Jimmy brought his dad, great guy. Jimmy also came in
Speaker 3: with the Chicago boss.
Speaker 6: Jaggosimitch Mo.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, let's get the other little buddy, my
Speaker 3: little Italian buddy, Vince.
Speaker 6: We'll get that commercial like one another way.
Speaker 4: He was on the.
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Speaker 4: Mm hmmm.
Speaker 3: And you know what's great. Jimmy the Guinea actually his father,
Speaker 3: his Folly department bought a flooring system from Vince. We'll
Speaker 3: cross over there.
Speaker 5: You know what I'm saying, Commission, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, welcome to Chad Harriple member.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I just thank him.
Speaker 3: Also, welcome to pro Oh no he didn't sign up. Okayea,
Speaker 3: let's bring it. Let's bring.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Uh and uh we might have a little technical thing
Speaker 7: here or there.
Speaker 5: We're gonna work on, but just to all work out,
Speaker 5: so it should be good.
Speaker 3: I love the guys from the sixties. Bro, we're gonna
Speaker 3: talk about the layoffs. The boys, guys.
Speaker 5: Funny, laughing all the time.
Speaker 6: If you smile, Chief, you smile, you ready, geh me
Speaker 6: a smile. He's he's like, all ready, let's go, let's go,
Speaker 6: let's go. Yeah, let's go.
Speaker 5: All right, coming to the stage.
Speaker 7: F d n Y Battalian, Chief Tom Barton, he is
Speaker 7: forty years four.
Speaker 4: Oh, you got before we were born. I don't want
Speaker 4: to make it feel all cheap, but you got on
Speaker 4: before we were born.
Speaker 3: Let's get before we get lost in associate All right,
Speaker 3: here we go.
Speaker 2: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States
Speaker 2: of America and to the Republic, for which it stands,
Speaker 2: one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice.
Speaker 4: For all.
Speaker 3: Excellent day. All right, crank it up, guns. We gotta
Speaker 3: go a little further back today in the way back,
Speaker 3: way back, way back in time.
Speaker 4: Before we even get to the job.
Speaker 6: I think he has a DeLorean in his driveway. Still.
Speaker 6: I think.
Speaker 3: Let's go to the early days of a Chief Thomas Martin,
Speaker 3: where you grew up a little about the family life,
Speaker 3: your dad, stuff like that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, Okay, where here we go? Uh? I grew
Speaker 4: up in East New York, Brooklyn, Wow, and uh had
Speaker 4: a great childhood with the Saint Malays down in Atlantic Avenue,
Speaker 4: Van Sickling. Your Brooklyn guys would know that. And then
Speaker 4: when I was twelve years old, we moved to Rockaway
Speaker 4: and spent ten years down in Rockaway. Uh. We we
Speaker 4: actually spent the summers there. We used to rent a bungalow.
Speaker 5: It was.
Speaker 4: Shay's bungalow. He was a fireman, a ninety fishery bo.
Speaker 4: He owned the bungalow, the set of bungalows where we lived.
Speaker 4: And so we used to spend our summers on the
Speaker 4: beach all day long, me and my two brothers for
Speaker 4: many years. And then in sixty two, the year and
Speaker 4: on a job I was still single of him with
Speaker 4: my folks, and we moved out the West Bowlin. And
Speaker 4: let's see after.
Speaker 3: That, howd to find the fire service chief?
Speaker 4: Well, it's a funny story, but it was. We have
Speaker 4: a relative, my maternal grandfather and if I can remember
Speaker 4: his name, he's my grandfather, Frank Owens. He was a
Speaker 4: battalion chief and I think the four to two battalion.
Speaker 4: He died in nineteen twenty six, so I have I
Speaker 4: never worked with him. I was glad to say. But
Speaker 4: my older brother went on the fire department nineteen sixty.
Speaker 4: My brother Jim went to sixty five Engine and I
Speaker 4: was in Well. He had gotten that in the Navy
Speaker 4: were not a fire department. So I was in the
Speaker 4: Navy and the test came. My brother fied for me
Speaker 4: for the test, and I had three months to go
Speaker 4: in the Navy, and the Navy would not give me
Speaker 4: leave to take the test. So I missed the tests.
Speaker 4: So I get out of the Navy. I go back
Speaker 4: to my old job. I worked at Western Union Laboratories,
Speaker 4: testing equipment. And I get a notice they're gonna have
Speaker 4: a special military exam on Chambers Street and in August
Speaker 4: or September. Okay, So I got down there in August,
Speaker 4: about fifty of us in the class. I'm sitting there
Speaker 4: and I said to the guy next to me, I said,
Speaker 4: you missed the test. He goes, yeah, yeah. I said,
Speaker 4: what happened to you? He said, I was in jail.
Speaker 4: This is in jail.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I said, what were you in jail for? He's attempted murderers.
Speaker 4: I said, this is the job I'm going on. I
Speaker 4: don't think he passed the test. I hope, but I
Speaker 4: don't even think he made the fire.
Speaker 5: So that came the Chief department.
Speaker 4: Yeah, whatever my mark was, they put me in the list,
Speaker 4: and I ended up coming on a job in August
Speaker 4: of sixty two.
Speaker 3: Was that one was that Wards Island?
Speaker 4: No? No, no, it was.
Speaker 9: Roosevelt Roosevelt Island, That's what I mean.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So my brother was a sixty five engine at
Speaker 4: the time, and the guy who worked with Bill Moffatt
Speaker 4: is Bill Moffat's father was the captain of Engine one.
Speaker 4: And uh so my brother spoke the Bill, and Bill's
Speaker 4: spoke to his father and Yogi Bear. You remember Yogi
Speaker 4: Bear was running the rock back then. Yeah, you guys
Speaker 4: know that name.
Speaker 5: No, no, Yogi Bear, the bear.
Speaker 4: So he ended the end of training that day. This
Speaker 4: is Martin, come to the office. I go to the office. Yes, gee,
Speaker 4: you have to report today to Captain Moffort over an
Speaker 4: Engine one. Do you know why? So I had an idea,
Speaker 4: I said, no, Chief, no idea. Yeah, I think I
Speaker 4: know why. But anyway, so I went over there. I
Speaker 4: went over to one engine after the after the training tour,
Speaker 4: and so I get to the firehouse one in twenty four,
Speaker 4: which is our thirty first and seventh right to set Francis.
Speaker 4: So summertime, the doors are up. Back in those days,
Speaker 4: the doors are always up on the firehouse. And so
Speaker 4: I get there and I see the short stocking guy
Speaker 4: and he says to me, hey, kid, what are you
Speaker 4: doing here? I said, so I have to see Captain Moffatt.
Speaker 4: He says, you have to see captain your approbate schoolers. Yeah,
Speaker 4: he says, uh, come on in the kitchen. So I
Speaker 4: go in the kitchen. He pops the cold and he
Speaker 4: goes here, No, no, no, take the beer. I'm intimidating. I
Speaker 4: take the beer. I started to sit at the beer
Speaker 4: just then engine one engine and twenty four truck pull up.
Speaker 4: He says to be don't let the captain see you
Speaker 4: with that beer. I started the.
Speaker 5: Fire I ended up talked about right.
Speaker 4: Yeah. That was John O'Boyle, who was a great guy.
Speaker 4: So by we finished probably school my first tour, I'm
Speaker 4: a day tour. I committed the firehouse and uh it
Speaker 4: was the always had eight groups in those days. It
Speaker 4: was the old group system. Three guys in the group
Speaker 4: and you new guy. He always worked at the captains group.
Speaker 4: So I command forget what day it was, but the
Speaker 4: Captain's work and we has a roll call and he says,
Speaker 4: Martin go going it was it was from the other side,
Speaker 4: Irish guy. He says, I'm Attin going back, and they
Speaker 4: get them up and clean up, clean up that mess
Speaker 4: back there by the radiator. Yes, captain I go by.
Speaker 4: His blood all over the floor, so shit, So I'm
Speaker 4: mopping up the blood. And Dick Travis, who was in
Speaker 4: Prova school with me. His first tour, he went the
Speaker 4: twenty four truck and his first tour was the night
Speaker 4: tour before me. He walks out of the kitchen. He's
Speaker 4: going home, Dick, What what the hell happened? Is? Oh?
Speaker 4: Just short stocky guys. I don't know his name, but
Speaker 4: he thought he was in the bathroom taking a leak
Speaker 4: and he fell down the pole hole. My my god,
Speaker 4: you know why? I fell down the pole hole and
Speaker 4: he factioned his skull on you're the old cast iron radiators.
Speaker 4: But they had to give him an emergency Trachy out.
Speaker 3: Of me holy shit.
Speaker 4: And he lived nine months later, he's back in the
Speaker 4: full duty. He's assigned to for twenty years an engine
Speaker 4: one and when he had was twenty and we had
Speaker 4: the ambulance in the searchlight re quarters. So the ambulance
Speaker 4: had two guys on duty at all times and the
Speaker 4: search of that one guy and ladlos old times when
Speaker 4: they did twenty years would switched over to either the
Speaker 4: searchlight or the annulalce. So he went to the animals.
Speaker 4: So nine months later he's back in the ambulance. He
Speaker 4: ended up he ended up being the what was he
Speaker 4: the not the matri d but the MC at my
Speaker 4: bachelor party a couple of years later, great guy, JOHNA. Boyle.
Speaker 4: So that was my start in the fire department.
Speaker 7: How was the city back then? Chief in nineteen sixty two?
Speaker 7: Was it was were they doing work? Or what were
Speaker 7: you doing around there?
Speaker 6: One?
Speaker 4: At that time he was doing six hundred runs a year.
Speaker 4: I think they're doing six thousand now. Yeah, yeah, little
Speaker 4: doing six hundred runs. But one thing about the six
Speaker 4: hundred runs, we had no force alarms. We never had
Speaker 4: we work something. We had the fund district in our quarters.
Speaker 4: We had all kinds of factories and lofts, so a
Speaker 4: lot of sprinkler work which were not you didn't get
Speaker 4: a lot of fire, but you get a lot of smoke,
Speaker 4: you know. It was just of course, masks were like
Speaker 4: not around at that time, so it was.
Speaker 6: A shirt and filter. Yeah, yeah, you pull the coat up.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The bay doors were all manual, right.
Speaker 4: Or no one Actually we had one in twenty four
Speaker 4: had an electric door. Really. Yeah, they did the division.
Speaker 4: We had the division in quarters. They had a separate quarters.
Speaker 4: Next to that was a manual door. So and at
Speaker 4: that time the division outran all the companies. They used
Speaker 4: to go in all the boxes.
Speaker 5: Is that right, division?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So the deputies finally got that straight back because
Speaker 4: you know, they don't like that ship going on. So
Speaker 4: I was there. I loved the place. Great guy. I
Speaker 4: would say at least half of my company, both companies.
Speaker 4: Well World War two vets guys who are in their forties. Now,
Speaker 4: you know, the war was fifteen years old, so at
Speaker 4: war had ended fifteen years ago. So word World War
Speaker 4: two guys. And you know you never heard any stories
Speaker 4: from these guys. They never talked about it. Yeah, they
Speaker 4: never talked about their experiences. John T. O'hagen was a
Speaker 4: deputy Nott corner. He jumped over Normandy. He was a paratrooper.
Speaker 4: And we had a guy de Lorie John de Lowry
Speaker 4: in the year truck. He was a little time he
Speaker 4: jumped in Normandy. They never they never talked about it,
Speaker 4: you know, talk to themselves.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you went to you went to the truck
Speaker 3: right before.
Speaker 4: What happened with tra is the guy I told you
Speaker 4: about the first night when he came out. Uh, Dick
Speaker 4: was a super student and he got promoted with six
Speaker 4: years at a job, so uh he he knew he
Speaker 4: was gonna get promoted. So we we did a swap.
Speaker 4: He went the Engine one. I went to twenty four truck.
Speaker 4: And that was a nice experience. I worked with great
Speaker 4: guys in the twenty four truck, Ronnie Brown and all
Speaker 4: the crudding. Just a lot of great person out we had.
Speaker 4: We had some asshole bosses and we had some great bosses,
Speaker 4: so it worked both ways. We had one guy, and
Speaker 4: I won't mention his name, he was. He was an
Speaker 4: office of an engine one and I was very aggressive
Speaker 4: as a you know, a brand new fireman of course.
Speaker 4: And uh, the other guy I was approbate with me.
Speaker 4: He was like the class ahead of me, we're both
Speaker 4: trobies together. Uh. The way it worked, whoever came into
Speaker 4: the quarters first, you put your helmet and you turn
Speaker 4: our coat on a nozzle that means that meant you
Speaker 4: had the nozzle for the tour. So we would always
Speaker 4: try and beat each other in to get the nozzle.
Speaker 4: And it turns out that he ended up he ended
Speaker 4: up getting to be a lieutenant and engine five to
Speaker 4: three up in Harlem. But let's see, lost by train
Speaker 4: of thought, where were we.
Speaker 3: You ride my back step back then though?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: Was that you were riding the back step back then?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: In fact, I was riding the hose bed because we
Speaker 4: had a CD pumper and room for it had room
Speaker 4: for four guys in the backstep. I rode in the
Speaker 4: hose bed and we never heard it open there. It
Speaker 4: was an open cab, and we had the bell right
Speaker 4: behind the officer, and my job was to sit in
Speaker 4: there the hose bed and ring the bell.
Speaker 5: That's crazy. I don't think we ever heard that before.
Speaker 4: No, no, yeah, Now, it was a room for four
Speaker 4: and the CD pumpers and you know they were smaller
Speaker 4: and narrow, so there wasn't a lot of room in
Speaker 4: those things. But they got us, they got us to
Speaker 4: the fire. You know, they worked.
Speaker 5: Could you like the engine of the truck at that time? Better?
Speaker 5: You know, what kind of work did you like better? Well?
Speaker 4: I love that you work. I mean, there's nothing better
Speaker 4: to being a nasal man first doing the job. We
Speaker 4: all know that that's the best. That's the best position
Speaker 4: there is. And I enjoyed both, you know, I enjoyed
Speaker 4: the excitement of even the truck you off by yourself,
Speaker 4: you know, a little scary in the beginning, but you
Speaker 4: know you learned experience. So I mean I love I
Speaker 4: love both. I actually loved every rank I was in.
Speaker 4: I mean, there's that one rank I didn't really enjoy
Speaker 4: the thing. The nice thing about BC when I made
Speaker 4: b C was back then, uh, there was no GPS's.
Speaker 4: I could do what I want, I could.
Speaker 5: Know where I want.
Speaker 6: Some of the benefits.
Speaker 5: Yes, And I was a little.
Speaker 4: I was a little adventuresome.
Speaker 3: They say, but how was the How is the kitchen
Speaker 3: table a baut then?
Speaker 4: Was it rough? Oh? Well it's always been rough. Always
Speaker 4: no holes Bard, as we all know, no holes. Bard.
Speaker 4: You know, no such thing as ethnic Uh politeness.
Speaker 6: Of course, political correctness.
Speaker 4: I mean the kitchen is we all know what the
Speaker 4: kitchen is.
Speaker 5: Brutal honesty. That's what it is. Brutal honesty. I can't
Speaker 5: take it.
Speaker 4: Get out of the kitchen. And we had a lot
Speaker 4: of guys. You know, we had the we had the UH,
Speaker 4: the the search light, the animals, and the chief and
Speaker 4: the aid and the two companies. So on our table,
Speaker 4: you know we do.
Speaker 5: Yeah, a lot of guys. Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 4: That's a funny story. This guy, Ronnie Rader, a great guy,
Speaker 4: the truck, great fire and so, uh the meal was
Speaker 4: a dollar five one night and he went bananas, jumping
Speaker 4: up and down. What asshole brought this meal?
Speaker 5: It's a red dollar, a dollar it was.
Speaker 4: A dollar five, and oh man, the ship hit the fan.
Speaker 4: He went and he was very well respected. So the
Speaker 4: guy that bought the meal was like, oh, I'll never
Speaker 4: do that again.
Speaker 3: What was what was your pay in nineteen sixty two?
Speaker 4: Well, do I remember? Is because we had deputy quarters
Speaker 4: and Pat Connois was the division commander and UH, on payday,
Speaker 4: the junior man in the company on watch would have
Speaker 4: to take the deputy's check, go across the street to
Speaker 4: the bank and cash it. So that was always me
Speaker 4: the junior guys. So I remember going to walking across
Speaker 4: the street. My take home was one hunting forty nine
Speaker 4: dollars every two weeks. That was my check every two weeks.
Speaker 4: And I remember walking across the street and I'm looking
Speaker 4: at his check. It was like four twenty dollars, and
Speaker 4: I'm thinking, what the hell does he do with all
Speaker 4: this money? I couldn't believe that, what.
Speaker 5: The hell is he doing all this money? I love it?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was making a hunting forty nine dollars I want.
Speaker 4: I was one of the few guys in my provy
Speaker 4: class that actually got a raise coming on the fire department.
Speaker 4: Most of the guys were construction working, so they were
Speaker 4: taking a hit coming out of the firefarck. We were
Speaker 4: making out of forty eight hundred bucks a year or
Speaker 4: something like that. I don't know what it was. I
Speaker 4: was working for wester Indian Laboratories. I was making less
Speaker 4: than a hunting forty nine dollars every two weeks. Because
Speaker 4: that was a raise for me. So I was very happy.
Speaker 4: So let's see moving.
Speaker 7: On, Yeah, when did you when did you decide that
Speaker 7: you wanted to when when twenty six to two opened up?
Speaker 4: What was, Well, what happened was, uh, when I switched,
Speaker 4: when I went across the floor to twenty four, I
Speaker 4: became the uf A delegate. So we had this deputy
Speaker 4: in quarters, Harold Matheson, and uh, he got detailed downtown
Speaker 4: for the TIPS program. That's a long time ago, but
Speaker 4: it was. I think it was tactical information for parilous
Speaker 4: situations tips.
Speaker 7: And yeah, pos parlous I gave you a tips stay
Speaker 7: out of the stock bucket.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So the Vision used to carry his ship in their
Speaker 4: truck the Tips program, So he went he worked on
Speaker 4: that for a couple of months down there and now
Speaker 4: the division. So he made a contract while he was
Speaker 4: down there. And so I'm home on vacation. I get
Speaker 4: a call from one of the guys in the truck. Hey,
Speaker 4: Don Matheson just had a roll call and he said
Speaker 4: that on the next Tuesday, we have to move all
Speaker 4: the equipment off the second floor, all the lockers, everything
Speaker 4: off the second floor. That's why, because they're getting the
Speaker 4: new floor. He made some contract downtown. We're getting the
Speaker 4: new floor in the fireouse. Ah ship as well, let
Speaker 4: me call it. So I called Frank Palumbo, who was
Speaker 4: a VP in the UFA. Then, so I called Frank
Speaker 4: and I tell him the story. Calls me back a
Speaker 4: few minutes there he goes, no, good, we don't touch
Speaker 4: it's in the contract. We do not touch any equipment.
Speaker 4: Blah blah blah. You don't have to worry about it.
Speaker 4: It's okay. So I go go into the fireouse. I'm
Speaker 4: on vacation. I go in, I type up a note,
Speaker 4: put it on the union board.
Speaker 5: Nobody touch any equipment.
Speaker 4: As for the contract, you don't. We don't move any equipment.
Speaker 4: He comes into work and he sees the boat on
Speaker 4: the board. My name's on it, Martin. What the hell
Speaker 4: is that? So now he has he has another roll
Speaker 4: call and he says to the guys, if you don't
Speaker 4: move the equipment, you know he's mutuals. Mutuals are privilege,
Speaker 4: So if you don't move the equipment, you can forget
Speaker 4: about the privilege. So of course I get another phone call.
Speaker 4: I call him Palumbo again. It's here's what he'sa no,
Speaker 4: no mutuals if they don't move the equipment. Plumbo calls
Speaker 4: the UFO A, the UFO A and it gets it.
Speaker 4: I don't know who it was. Calls Matthison, and says,
Speaker 4: knock off this ship. That's not gonna work. So you
Speaker 4: can't do it. They get mutuals stopped the bullshit. I
Speaker 4: commit the quarters. He's oh, he's pest man. He he
Speaker 4: wants to get me. By the way, he was he
Speaker 4: was a National Guard. He was a lieutenant colonel a
Speaker 4: National Guard. Well he thought he was in the National
Speaker 4: God when he was in the firehouse.
Speaker 5: That was the party.
Speaker 4: I committed the firehouse and I'm on watch, and uh
Speaker 4: and I'm thirty first shooting on watch. We always wore
Speaker 4: to tie the jacket. He wore the hat unless you
Speaker 4: had the name plate. You can you can leave the
Speaker 4: hat up. All the rules. So I'm sitting at the
Speaker 4: desk at the house watch. We got a covered lieutenant,
Speaker 4: a little skinny guy and over again. He came from
Speaker 4: a busy company in Brooklyn and he's like a brand
Speaker 4: new lieutenant. So mattheson they went out on the run.
Speaker 4: So he goes out on the run. I have to
Speaker 4: raise the door. When I raised the door, my pants
Speaker 4: go up. I had dark green socks on it. So
Speaker 4: Matthews is the seasons and now he comes back from
Speaker 4: the run. No, I raised the door I'm sitting at
Speaker 4: the desk. He comes around. He goes, Martin, stand up, Yes, gee,
Speaker 4: what color socks do you have on it? So I
Speaker 4: knew dark green. Lea's get your officer down there. So
Speaker 4: we had the poll hole right at the house. Watch.
Speaker 4: I tap on the pall and say, look, the deputy
Speaker 4: wants to see it. So he slices the pall. He's
Speaker 4: a brand new lieutenant. You see, he's nervous. So Matthews says,
Speaker 4: you see this man's room. Is he in the proper uniform? Again?
Speaker 4: So where this guy came from, they must have all
Speaker 4: dressed like shit because he looked at me. He goes, oh, yes, sorry,
Speaker 4: look at it, look at it. Just look at his socks.
Speaker 4: This the socks stick. So I pull up my pants.
Speaker 4: He goes, he's dark green socks. Hook him up. Well,
Speaker 4: the guy almost had a heart attack on hook him up.
Speaker 6: I mean, this is like so hook him up for socks.
Speaker 6: It sounds familiar. I didn't go very far.
Speaker 4: He says, right away, you got three late watches, and
Speaker 4: then I'll figure out what we're gonna do after this. Okay, geez,
Speaker 4: the next tour, I get on the train. I was
Speaker 4: taking the train, lived in West Bamlo, was taking the
Speaker 4: train after West Bamlin and a good friend of mine,
Speaker 4: Ray Brown, who had been a firefighter at Rescue One
Speaker 4: where my brother was sixty five, was in with Rescue
Speaker 4: one then, and so I knew Ray quite a while,
Speaker 4: and I'm telling them the story about Mattheson. So Ray
Speaker 4: had just got a sign. They had just formed the
Speaker 4: second sectionwenty six to two. So raised in ten twenty
Speaker 4: six two. Me, you think you might want to come
Speaker 4: up to home. Wow, I says, shit, I don't know,
Speaker 4: let me think about it. So I go home. I
Speaker 4: said to my wife, here's the story. She said, whoa,
Speaker 4: it's up to you you. I called Ray that night
Speaker 4: at ten o'clock. That was a Tuesday Thursday. I was
Speaker 4: in twenty six too.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 4: There was no paperwork because what happened was when they
Speaker 4: formed the second sections, the captains dumped all the guys
Speaker 4: that didn't want just got real. So there were a
Speaker 4: lot of guys in those second sections that didn't want
Speaker 4: to be there. So the policy was body for a body.
Speaker 4: If you could get somebody coming in, somebody could leave.
Speaker 4: So this guy who was the Statin Island guy, he
Speaker 4: wanted out bed and I want to live, so bingo,
Speaker 4: it just did the swap. So I said yes. On
Speaker 4: Tuesday Thursday, I was now a member of twenty six
Speaker 4: to two.
Speaker 5: Always that the worst.
Speaker 4: About a week later, where's Martin Martin?
Speaker 5: He hasn't gone, Oh my god, he must have been.
Speaker 4: And Martin told and mart said, to give you this.
Speaker 4: I'm France forward about about five years. So about that
Speaker 4: was like sixty beginning of sixty nine. So I got
Speaker 4: promoted seventy three. I'm a cover lieutenant No. Eighty five engines.
Speaker 5: And run into this guy again.
Speaker 4: So there's no cellar in the tin house. So the
Speaker 4: only place the boys can have an adult coverage in
Speaker 4: the kitchen. So I am being a good boy and
Speaker 4: I'm on the app breass Well, I'm looking at the window,
Speaker 4: which is like I told us, so it's shitty app.
Speaker 4: I'm just looking at the window. Boys are in the back,
Speaker 4: and all of a sudden, this red car pulls up
Speaker 4: on the on the on the apron and said, you know,
Speaker 4: it doesn't look like a battalion car or a division car.
Speaker 4: Door opens up its mapes and he's now a staf chief.
Speaker 4: I've seen this guy.
Speaker 3: Since he was five years but he remembered you.
Speaker 4: In the back. I'm dead. I'm dead. So he stops
Speaker 4: walking towards the firehouse. His aid gets out of the
Speaker 4: car and I see his age. Mattheson turns around. He
Speaker 4: goes back to the car, and the car leaves. He
Speaker 4: goes to a third lam in the Bronx takes his
Speaker 4: three corner dive. He's out of a jug.
Speaker 5: That's good.
Speaker 7: You never had to deal with you would have you
Speaker 7: wouldn't have been able to beat him downstairs.
Speaker 3: Probably another thing Martin.
Speaker 4: Up twenty six too, And.
Speaker 5: What was that like, Chief Pawan? What was that like
Speaker 5: like the first tour? Was it like a huge like? Well,
Speaker 5: change obviously was a big change, right, I mean these guys.
Speaker 4: Here were all these I mean, he's some of these
Speaker 4: guys are legends. You know, twenty six truck. I'm coming
Speaker 4: from one engine doing six on the runs a year, right,
Speaker 4: I mean I've been the fires, but you know nothing
Speaker 4: like what these guys are doing. So I was nervous.
Speaker 4: Ray Brown was my boss, which was great. He was
Speaker 4: a gray Brown was a fabulous fire officer, a great person,
Speaker 4: but a fabulous fire officer. So, uh so the first tour.
Speaker 4: We we right, we got a job. So of course
Speaker 4: we got a job. So Ray giving me the outside vent.
Speaker 4: So we we had a rear mount. So the rear
Speaker 4: mount the hooks were. We had tubes in the back
Speaker 4: and the hooks were in the back. So I jump
Speaker 4: off the rag. I'm a aggressive. I grabbed a hook,
Speaker 4: start running for the building. I go around the back,
Speaker 4: going to go up the river. I'm going with the fire.
Speaker 4: I'm having to jump. I got a ten foot hook.
Speaker 4: I just grabbed the hook trying to go around the bed.
Speaker 4: They got a ten foot hooks. Oh, man, if the
Speaker 4: guys can you imagine I got to do with that.
Speaker 4: But having Ray as as a boss with thoughts he had,
Speaker 4: he had I think three sons in the job.
Speaker 3: Really, but just how much work were they doing? Like
Speaker 3: a ton of work? Were they going, Oh, we're.
Speaker 4: Doing tom We're doing but we're doing I don't know
Speaker 4: what the numbers will be, three, five or six grand
Speaker 4: a year. Yeah, it was busy as hell. I mean
Speaker 4: we were doing thirty ones on the night to us
Speaker 4: sometimes cheap.
Speaker 7: We messed this guys with one O three and one
Speaker 7: O three two. How are the guys from twenty six trucks.
Speaker 4: They didn't do near the work that we did.
Speaker 5: Really, I'm saying, did you guys?
Speaker 7: There was a little animosity in one O three in
Speaker 7: one O three two, like did you have the same thing?
Speaker 4: I tell you the truth, there was none. We got
Speaker 4: along like we've been there for a hundred years together.
Speaker 4: I mean, I'm not kidding. With the engine and the
Speaker 4: two trucks, we got along great. John o'reagan was the
Speaker 4: captain of twenty six truck. He was not happy that
Speaker 4: we would add because John, who was also a fabulous firefighter,
Speaker 4: twenty six trucks his baby. So when they made the
Speaker 4: second section.
Speaker 5: You're taking some work, right, you're taking a little bit
Speaker 5: of work.
Speaker 10: Yeah, sure, Yeah, he was not happy. But didn't he
Speaker 10: write it? Didn't he write ladders? John latter three? He
Speaker 10: wrote Lattice three with another guy. Yeah, and I'm gonna
Speaker 10: tell you Lattice three. If you ever look at the
Speaker 10: original Lattice three.
Speaker 4: Back then there were there was a lot of companies
Speaker 4: being sent up relocating and guys changing young offices, and
Speaker 4: like then you know what's what's going on. He'd have
Speaker 4: copies of Lattice three for every company to come up there.
Speaker 4: Take a look at this rip and because if you
Speaker 4: followed Lattice three, it was very it was very good. Neeah,
Speaker 4: it was a great It was a great book. It
Speaker 4: really was, in fact the funny story. Years later on
Speaker 4: Lieutenant nineteen and I sent an addendum in oh ship,
Speaker 4: I'm trying to think the name of the guy. He
Speaker 4: was the commissioner and he had been a black guy.
Speaker 4: That was a great guy. Husakman. Yeah, that's very good,
Speaker 4: said at the top at a top floor fire, there's
Speaker 4: no need for the officer and force ABLEPY team to
Speaker 4: go to the roof because the roofman are experienced, and
Speaker 4: what are they going to do on the roof the
Speaker 4: guys at the swords and the access there. So I
Speaker 4: said they should go to the top floor, especially in
Speaker 4: the age type, because you have a lot of apartments,
Speaker 4: and that way you get two teams at their thirst.
Speaker 4: And I said, if you first do you don't take
Speaker 4: a mask because there's no time. They put this in
Speaker 4: the book of rules exactly verbatim, just like that. Do
Speaker 4: you imagine that today you don't need a mask?
Speaker 3: Yeah, the mask, so bunk is optional.
Speaker 4: Comes down to the department order, you know. Blah blah,
Speaker 4: doesn't mention my name, just as a change change in
Speaker 4: Ladder street. So Red knew he was the chief and
Speaker 4: he loved battalion. Now Jesus, and who the hell is
Speaker 4: changing my ladder three? So he makes some require he
Speaker 4: finds out me. So he calls me up. He's a uh, hey,
Speaker 4: Tomas is Chief Oreagan. I said, oh, hi, Chief, I don't,
Speaker 4: He goes, Did you send it in addendum right away? Oh? Ship,
Speaker 4: I said, I did, Chief, And I should have called
Speaker 4: you first, your goddamn right. He was pissed, Oh he was,
Speaker 4: But we end up as friends later on. He was
Speaker 4: he was John was a good guy. Uh, of course
Speaker 4: that's all changed.
Speaker 6: They mustn't.
Speaker 4: Somebody woke up with day He said, what are your nuts?
Speaker 4: Tell guys don't take a scot you know? Yeah?
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, Well Chief, what was it like? Uh? In
Speaker 5: the firehouse? How did you guys like?
Speaker 4: Where?
Speaker 5: Where were you were? You were behind the truck that
Speaker 5: you were behind twenty six where?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it is the way it worked. Uh, but Monday
Speaker 4: a lot of twes six would be in front, we'd
Speaker 4: be beyond Tuesday.
Speaker 5: Was no shit.
Speaker 4: Really, that's the way he did it and and the
Speaker 4: way it worked was if it was the first do box,
Speaker 4: both companies went. If it was second due the company
Speaker 4: was the lead company, that was your first, you go
Speaker 4: and the other guy stayed back. That's the way they
Speaker 4: worked it. That was a good system.
Speaker 7: You have all that work in the projects too, like
Speaker 7: great dad and you always I mean, were you in
Speaker 7: the project?
Speaker 4: I tell you we had very little work in the projects.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, we get.
Speaker 4: The incinerators once in a while. When I was in nineteen,
Speaker 4: we have a lot more of that ship on on
Speaker 4: Webstern Avenue with the projects with the incinerators that much.
Speaker 4: And we were surrounded by project buildings.
Speaker 5: In twenty six but yeah, right, right.
Speaker 4: We didn't We didn't have but we didn't We didn't
Speaker 4: have much of that stuff. Now we had a lot
Speaker 4: of good work, of course, but we didn't have that.
Speaker 4: So what year is this? What were you too?
Speaker 5: You're six seventy three?
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, I got promoted in seventy three in lieutenant.
Speaker 3: When did they start talking about the layoffs?
Speaker 4: The first heard the layoffs started in the seventy five
Speaker 4: Oh okay, yeah, so I was there about two years
Speaker 4: in nineteen when the layoffs started, and that was terrible times.
Speaker 4: I mean some guys get laid off over a year.
Speaker 4: Some guys get laid off. I think my brother. But
Speaker 4: my brother lives with me. He was easy retired five musher.
Speaker 4: I think he get laid off for a day. He
Speaker 4: came on in sixty eight, my brother. But some guys
Speaker 4: get laid off for a long time. But what we
Speaker 4: had the Eminem Boys, two guys from the fifty engine
Speaker 4: and they started a food truck, the Eminem Boys and
Speaker 4: both their last name started with them and they retiring guy.
Speaker 4: So making Italian heroes.
Speaker 6: What Italian guys? Man what? It was pretty Oh yeah,
Speaker 6: they would do.
Speaker 4: And they have all the sandwiches ship made up on
Speaker 4: the gym, a nice sized truck and they would go
Speaker 4: around to the job. There's always jobs going on. They
Speaker 4: would just go around to the jobs with food self
Speaker 4: food to the guys. You know it.
Speaker 5: It was great.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 6: Yeah, see if you mentioned your son, I just let
Speaker 6: me bring this one up really quick before we get
Speaker 6: too far ahead. They wanted to share that with our audio.
Speaker 4: Yeah that's my son, Brian.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he got on the job right, No he was,
Speaker 3: He was not on a job.
Speaker 4: No one of your sons. My son was on the job.
Speaker 4: Is that other picture at Memorial Day? That's it. Yeah,
Speaker 4: that's my son. He was a nineteen truck. He's out
Speaker 4: of the job. He got hurt. He got the next
Speaker 4: fusion operation and he had to get in the job
Speaker 4: at eighteen years old. He was the last class of
Speaker 4: four nine to eleven. Really, and I'll tell you, I
Speaker 4: tell you a story about that. Pete Dancy actually saved
Speaker 4: my son's life. I'm at family Day, my son's brobi class,
Speaker 4: and People's a friend of mine on him a long time.
Speaker 4: So he's the chief of department at the time. And
Speaker 4: back then the classes were doing seven weeks in the
Speaker 4: Asian seven weeks in the truck while they were in school.
Speaker 4: Then they go back to school. So he did his
Speaker 4: fourteen weeks in one o five, two o nine, one
Speaker 4: oh five, and he loved it there. Great, you know,
Speaker 4: great guys over there, busy place. So he said to me, uh,
Speaker 4: he said, I really want to go there. He says, well,
Speaker 4: you know, they say you can't go to the place
Speaker 4: where he did your fourteen weeks. That's out. Well, I said,
Speaker 4: I'll talk. So I go over to People's there. You know,
Speaker 4: he's watching the pacifically and I tell him the story
Speaker 4: piece of time. I can't do it because there's four
Speaker 4: other chief sons in this class and everybody's gonna ask,
Speaker 4: you know the policy. You can't. Can't do it, Okay,
Speaker 4: So I go back to dumbs. It's out. So I'm
Speaker 4: trying to think of the name. Guy had three three
Speaker 4: letters to his name, big, big husky guy was He
Speaker 4: went to one O five because he was a PROB
Speaker 4: signed to the Captains Group. He was killed at nine
Speaker 4: to eleven. Wow. Yeah, so Pete saved my son's life. Actually,
Speaker 4: that's the way I always looked at it. Yes, where
Speaker 4: do you wind up going?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 4: Put him in twenty six truck. And then he said
Speaker 4: to me, you know, Dad, because when we were when
Speaker 4: I was lieutenant there, I used to bring my kids
Speaker 4: in all time. They used to ride with us all
Speaker 4: the time, putting out rubbish. Fried He is, I really
Speaker 4: like to go to the nineteen truck.
Speaker 5: So that baby there, hot chief.
Speaker 4: Look at that one. Yeah, well that's what I don't think.
Speaker 6: Anything beats those sea grades back in the day.
Speaker 4: Man, I tell you, I like I like the rear amount. Man.
Speaker 4: I'll tell you when I went to twenty six too,
Speaker 4: because we were second section. They didn't. They really didn't
Speaker 4: treat us well, didn't they get we had the worst saws?
Speaker 4: All that ship they gave us. When a new saw
Speaker 4: came out, we got the old saw.
Speaker 9: Twenty fasters find twenty six.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we had the fifty three America of France. That's
Speaker 4: what we drove. I mean, it rowed great and had
Speaker 4: a great timetable. Man, you could throw that ladder up
Speaker 4: lickety split, really really good. But it was an all
Speaker 4: piece of shit, you know. That's that's where we were
Speaker 4: driving around in.
Speaker 3: How long the twenty six two stay in service?
Speaker 4: They went out of service in seventy five?
Speaker 3: Wow, so it was only only missed two years, you know.
Speaker 4: Promoted? Uh yeah, yeah, yeah. I was there beginning sixty
Speaker 4: nine to seventy five, seventy three, and then seventy five
Speaker 4: they did away with them. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Did when did you start studying? Chief? Well, you're always studying.
Speaker 4: At started studying. I've never studied in one in twenty
Speaker 4: four for other reasons. But you know, a little bit
Speaker 4: of party in time. But when I went up to
Speaker 4: twenty six truck, believe it or not, as busy as
Speaker 4: they were. Everybody in that firehouse was studying, except the
Speaker 4: real real old timers. They weren't studying. Everybody else was studying.
Speaker 4: I guess I gotta study, you know the hell. So
Speaker 4: I ended up I ended up sudd him. But when
Speaker 4: I get the nineteen, I love that so much. I
Speaker 4: passed up two camp sets.
Speaker 5: I was going to find your really.
Speaker 4: Jack corpor you know Jack Cork.
Speaker 5: Yeah, of course, yeah.
Speaker 4: Jack. Jack was my show for nineteen for a while,
Speaker 4: and he said, you you got to take that test.
Speaker 4: You can't keep passing it up. So I ended up
Speaker 4: taking a test and getting promoted in eighty one the captain.
Speaker 7: But how did how did you get nineteen? Were you
Speaker 7: bouncing around at all?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was bouncing in the sixth division. Me and
Speaker 4: Bobby Love. You know, you know the story you heard
Speaker 4: Bobby Love? No, oh Bob Love.
Speaker 5: He was I've heard the name. I've heard the name.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, Bob Well, he was a Booklyn firefighter and
Speaker 4: he was in twenty six truck with me, and uh
Speaker 4: famous story. Bob comes into work one night, you know,
Speaker 4: something with the with the adult beverage, and uh there's
Speaker 4: load on and he said, yeah, you know what, he's
Speaker 4: having to make a roof rope rescue tonight. Yeah, so
Speaker 4: now we all go to bed. He went to sleep
Speaker 4: on the running board so we would miss the run.
Speaker 4: They got a job and he made a roof rope rescue.
Speaker 5: The chief space. Looking at the chief space.
Speaker 3: He did he did the Babe ruth he pointed out where.
Speaker 4: True story. Yeah, Bob was something else at a position. Bob,
Speaker 4: we called him. He was deware was supposed to be.
Speaker 5: I know guys like that, allegedly chief allegedly. I know
Speaker 5: if you guys.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's a great guy. Bob, Yeah, a great guy.
Speaker 4: So we were we were lieutenants in nineteen truck hether.
Speaker 4: This was fun what I'm.
Speaker 5: Saying you had?
Speaker 7: How did were bouncing around like you knew you were
Speaker 7: going to nineteen or side of.
Speaker 4: The sixth division. And I was covered in eighty three
Speaker 4: and twenty nine. I was doing a couple of vacations there, and.
Speaker 5: Uh I had to be busy then, right, I had
Speaker 5: to be rocking.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they were all busy. Everybody everybody up there was
Speaker 4: fourteen and I mean seventeen and sixty. They were running.
Speaker 4: Everybody was busy. Forty one So, uh, I put a
Speaker 4: paper in because it was a spot gonna open Three
Speaker 4: spots are gonna open up. In nineteen truck. Two guys
Speaker 4: we're retiring, and one guy was getting promoted. So I
Speaker 4: had covered the and I knew that was happening. So
Speaker 4: I put a paper in. Bobby Loved put a paper in.
Speaker 4: And when I was at oys, this guy, Jack Bows,
Speaker 4: I got to know, so I called him up and
Speaker 4: so he put a paper. So the three of us
Speaker 4: put a paper in. And well, I'm an eighty three
Speaker 4: engine one day and we're going to the laundry. We're
Speaker 4: taking all the sheets to the laundry and woh, sirens
Speaker 4: looking at it's a division. We pull over the deputy.
Speaker 4: I can't remember his name. I was an old, rouchy guy,
Speaker 4: one of the old time, you know, the old school.
Speaker 4: He was walking up and he says, Martin, He said,
Speaker 4: don't you have a paper into the nineteen truck? As yes,
Speaker 4: she He says, you haven't got a chance to get it.
Speaker 4: What's the matter, he says, one of young men are
Speaker 4: riding the backstep not wearing a helmet.
Speaker 5: Oh boy, his chief, how.
Speaker 4: Am I supposed to see that. I'm in the front seat.
Speaker 4: It's your responsibility. Don't let it happen again. So the
Speaker 4: boys cooperated and I ended up getting nineteen truck, which
Speaker 4: was which is a great spot. In fact, the first
Speaker 4: captain there was Joe Calderrero when they had the Jennings
Speaker 4: Street collapse. Uh huh famous picture in WMAF all the
Speaker 4: rubble in the middle of the building and there's a
Speaker 4: leg sticking out of a boot. That was cappened Caldero. Really,
Speaker 4: guy Bob Piffedo was the whole interior to building collapse.
Speaker 4: So Bob was like on a three foot shelf against
Speaker 4: the wall with some other guys and they look down
Speaker 4: they can see the foot and it was a hose
Speaker 4: line that could pulled down with the collapse. So we're
Speaker 4: still attached upstairs here the hose and he slid three
Speaker 4: floors on the hose and dug him out. No ship
Speaker 4: got him out. So uh he can back the duty. Lah.
Speaker 5: I'm sure he got to Tony Bennett for that one.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, it was good. It was a good one. Yeah,
Speaker 4: good guy. So, uh he came back the duty. But
Speaker 4: they wouldn't give a night. They said nineteen. He said,
Speaker 4: nineteen is too busy for you. So he sent him
Speaker 4: a fifty two truck and happy. Joe Calber a good guy.
Speaker 4: So how about that guy Milner? Oh, Mike, Yeah, he's
Speaker 4: in the chair. I see Mike every once in a while.
Speaker 4: He goes through a lot of fire department stuff. I yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, he goes to a lot of stuff. I
Speaker 4: see him. He went over the rescue.
Speaker 3: Fo Yeah, that's where I met him. Yeah, rescue four.
Speaker 7: Did you have to did you have to grab by
Speaker 7: the ear chief and bring him down the hallway, like,
Speaker 7: come on.
Speaker 4: Mike, hold off to my coat?
Speaker 6: Three two and rescued him a four case?
Speaker 4: That Mike was good. But you know, if I met
Speaker 4: I met that. I wanted to mention something about when
Speaker 4: I was an engine one. We had a lieutenant who
Speaker 4: had been in World War Two that something happened to us.
Speaker 4: Picky in World War Two. He had absolute preference for Yeah,
Speaker 4: but back then he got absolute preference on every test
Speaker 4: for his career. But he didn't want to go about lieutenant.
Speaker 4: He made lieutenant. He was how bad.
Speaker 9: Everybody say that?
Speaker 4: John Hart a good friend of mine. We are prograged together.
Speaker 4: He's a god. Rest his soul. He's gone about six
Speaker 4: years now. But he was very John was very aggressive.
Speaker 4: I was aggressive, so It was always betrue, me and him,
Speaker 4: and I won't mention the guy's name. Lieutenant. We get
Speaker 4: to the door, is the fire, obvious fire? He'd hand
Speaker 4: one of us to light, say take the light, do
Speaker 4: a good job in it. That was it.
Speaker 5: That's as far as listen. I guess.
Speaker 7: Maybe if you get bullet shot, maybe you get a
Speaker 7: free pass.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 7: I said, when you get bullet shot at you, maybe
Speaker 7: you get a free pass.
Speaker 5: I don't know. Maybe you take a different, different thing.
Speaker 4: I don't know, with a bad pinky.
Speaker 5: I should have hit that picking out, you know what
Speaker 5: I mean.
Speaker 4: The door. You would have been cheap by now rough,
Speaker 4: I know exactly. And Chief don't ask you back then,
Speaker 4: we don't.
Speaker 3: We don't talk about this much. Did they have matrons
Speaker 3: in the firehouse when you go, oh yeah, oh absolutely yeah.
Speaker 4: The matrons back then were all widows firefighters, right that
Speaker 4: line of duidows. I'm someone more, I'm sure, but any
Speaker 4: any firefight died. His His wife was elger have a matron.
Speaker 3: And she would get a stipend, right, and she would
Speaker 3: come in and make the beds and to get but
Speaker 3: I forget how much the money was. It wasn't a
Speaker 3: lot of money.
Speaker 4: But they used to make the beds. I think mostly
Speaker 4: every day, but a lot of times we'd call up
Speaker 4: the matron at night. Don't come in, you know, so
Speaker 4: we would let them good. A lot of times they
Speaker 4: didn't come in then need the end. I don't think
Speaker 4: any of them were coming in, I think they were
Speaker 4: just getting the stipend. Right. They were all older women,
Speaker 4: you know, right, not as old as I am now,
Speaker 4: but they were all they were old.
Speaker 3: I remember my father taking me when I was a
Speaker 3: kid and they had a mate. They were one of
Speaker 3: the last companies on the job out a matron.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, I remember about what year was at.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna say the eighties, early eighties.
Speaker 4: Yeah, still that matrons in the eighties. Yeah, she was
Speaker 4: the last one on the job.
Speaker 3: I forget what her name, okay, yeah, yeah, well I
Speaker 3: brought that up.
Speaker 4: But that was a great idea. I mean it it
Speaker 4: was good for them because it was money.
Speaker 5: You know, what was it? What was? Uh?
Speaker 7: What was when you first got to nineteen like, new lieutenant,
Speaker 7: how how did you feel?
Speaker 5: How are the guys?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 4: I was nervous? You know the first time you're a boss,
Speaker 4: you know, you're nervous, and you know this is a
Speaker 4: busy company. It all look like an asshole. So I
Speaker 4: just did my what I Loveally, do you.
Speaker 5: Know you had to feel comfortable.
Speaker 7: I mean, you came from twenty six over that they
Speaker 7: knew that you had some experience.
Speaker 4: Obviously as a supervisor. You know, it was new to me.
Speaker 4: So I asked Charlie's. Bill Bodie was the chauffeur at
Speaker 4: that time, my chauffeur, and we had the yell on
Speaker 4: Third Avenue still and he used to get down Third
Speaker 4: Avenue and you know that I'm telling you, I had
Speaker 4: to change my end underwear. He was something else, Bill Bodie.
Speaker 4: But I said to him, after a couple of months,
Speaker 4: I say, Bill, what did they? How am I doing?
Speaker 4: You just keep doing what you're doing. I took that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, that's good.
Speaker 4: Worked out all right. Yeah, So that was a great place.
Speaker 7: You have any memorable jobs there that you remember, any
Speaker 7: any jobs.
Speaker 4: That you were calls? And he and he what any
Speaker 4: close calls? Oh, it was a lot of close calls. Man.
Speaker 4: I remember being in a vacant with the Captain of
Speaker 4: He was a Captain of the nine of forty four
Speaker 4: and ninety two captain of ninety two lose something. His
Speaker 4: Louis Schaeffer. Louis Shaefer, his son Jimmy Shaffer became a
Speaker 4: fireman in nineteen unfortunately killed in a motorcycle action. But look,
Speaker 4: lou and I I don't know how we ended up
Speaker 4: where both on the third floor that is vacant. There's
Speaker 4: no floor. We're on the both of us are on
Speaker 4: this beam and we got a line and we're putting
Speaker 4: fire out and saying, look what the hell are we
Speaker 4: doing here? He's a captain, Why the way the guys
Speaker 4: are they certainly they were doing something, but that that
Speaker 4: was the.
Speaker 6: Here outside watching.
Speaker 5: That much.
Speaker 4: I know, take a shot man today.
Speaker 5: They had a lot of projects too, right heah.
Speaker 4: A funny story about We were in one hundred sixty
Speaker 4: six Street in the old fire house. So they built
Speaker 4: the new fireous on third Avenue, one hundred sixty seventh Street,
Speaker 4: so it's ready to be occupied. They send fifty engine.
Speaker 4: You guys, you go over there. So fifty engine goes
Speaker 4: and they take the beer machine with them. Damn it,
Speaker 4: that's bad. Beer machine's gone now. So we're in the
Speaker 4: quarters with the division. So we get a job, go
Speaker 4: back to the job. It's day to us. So it's
Speaker 4: you know, like one o'clock in the afternoon. So we
Speaker 4: get about five quarts of beer. We whoping the gold
Speaker 4: gold rubles are so sitting in the gold room with them.
Speaker 4: Door opens up. It's Deputy Chief Bill Burke, say, Chief's Tom.
Speaker 4: There's nobody on watch, I say, Chief on on and off.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry.
Speaker 5: We say this all the time.
Speaker 7: Like again, you know, guys say all the time, you know,
Speaker 7: you shouldn't talk about drinking, you should do this and this.
Speaker 7: But there's no doubt that with the amount of work
Speaker 7: you guys were doing, right, that the chiefs let some
Speaker 7: stuff slide, right, guys said, right, there's no doubt because
Speaker 7: he could count on you guys, no matter what I mean.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And the thing is, you can't you can't get
Speaker 4: out of control. Once in a while, we have a
Speaker 4: guy get out of control, you'd have to step on him.
Speaker 4: But usually the you know, and most of the time
Speaker 4: you'd be drinking and you might be having a beer
Speaker 4: and you.
Speaker 5: Have to run. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Right, you know you're gone for an hour and a half,
Speaker 4: you know, you go back and right, Yeah, but uh,
Speaker 4: I mean I.
Speaker 3: Didn't think that was a drinking wasn't on the regulations
Speaker 3: until the seventies, right.
Speaker 4: Somewhere around Nothing said about it, Yeah right, yeah, they
Speaker 4: didn't mention it. And then what happened was Mike car
Speaker 4: a five engine was killed. He fell off the rig
Speaker 4: and he determined that he was drinking and he was killed.
Speaker 4: So Hagen was the chief part, and then he might
Speaker 4: have been both had the two hats on it. I
Speaker 4: don't know. So he sent down the auco Yeah two
Speaker 4: o two, so I was in twenty six two. Then
Speaker 4: so we're in the kitchen, we're having a call. One
Speaker 4: chief comes in. You say, man, I want to tell
Speaker 4: you last night auc two o two came down, so
Speaker 4: we don't want to see anymore beer. You got it.
Speaker 3: We want to see it.
Speaker 4: He just said I want to see it. So by
Speaker 4: a week later, working again, we all have coke cans
Speaker 4: except for one guy. So the chief comes in the
Speaker 4: same guy he was into the kitchen, Wilson and Chip.
Speaker 4: We're drinking out coachs and this one guy, Spooky, who
Speaker 4: was just a real character. He's kind of an alphol
Speaker 4: can drinking out of the alpohol can. And the chief
Speaker 4: was looking at him like the son of There was
Speaker 4: one bro that was Yeah, I mean they knew what
Speaker 4: was going on, and lors it wasn't out of control.
Speaker 5: Right, they didn't really, Yeah, I mean guys were dead.
Speaker 4: Some guys were death. You couldn you couldn't touch anything, right,
Speaker 4: you know, some some lieutenants.
Speaker 7: And of course yeah, I mean now I don't think
Speaker 7: I mean, I don't know, but obviously now you could
Speaker 7: lose your job, you know what I mean, Like we're
Speaker 7: not we're not we're not condoning drinking on the job.
Speaker 7: We're just saying that this is what was going on
Speaker 7: in nineteen seventy, for God's sake, you.
Speaker 4: Know what I mean, Like, that's fifty years ago.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and you would and you would, you guys would
Speaker 7: do a couple of jobs tonight, you know what I mean, Like, yeah,
Speaker 7: there was.
Speaker 3: No bunking gear or CBA just you.
Speaker 6: Know, yeah, lous, what'd you guys had your drinks? Would
Speaker 6: you use? I saw I.
Speaker 3: Used your old ladies underwear? All right? So you go
Speaker 3: get promoted to captain now in eighty one.
Speaker 5: Wow, you were nineteen a long time too, chief, Huh.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Yeah, I didn't want to leave. I'll tell you
Speaker 4: I did not want to leave.
Speaker 3: I kept passing over the tests, buddy, you kept passing
Speaker 3: over the tests, right, you want to say, yeah.
Speaker 4: I passed to test. It was crazy not my ass
Speaker 4: and maybe yeah. So I got voted eighty one, sent
Speaker 4: me over to Brooklyn and Frank Sellin, he was the
Speaker 4: captain of to sixteen at the time. I love you
Speaker 4: know he ended up somewhere. So even on vacation and John,
Speaker 4: I'm trying to think the damn division commander. He said, no,
Speaker 4: his damn ship. Well, anyway, they put me into sixteen
Speaker 4: and fill a vacation and Fellini gets promoted to battalion
Speaker 4: chief on he's on vacation, so they said, you got
Speaker 4: the spot. Well, there was a chief in quarters three
Speaker 4: five battalion. I always had trouble with chiefs. So there's
Speaker 4: a chief in the three five battalion. He'll remain nameless.
Speaker 4: He was a guard in Brooklyn. He had been a
Speaker 4: lieutenant one twenties guy, fabulous firefighter. However, we didn't get
Speaker 4: along for In fact, when I first got there, I
Speaker 4: walked in the office Chief Captain Martin Anders. Want to
Speaker 4: introduce myself. I know about you, No shit, what do
Speaker 4: you mean? You know? He said, you're one of the
Speaker 4: good guys in the Bronx. And I said to myself,
Speaker 4: they were all good guys in the Bronx. What hell
Speaker 4: was he talking about? So we didn't we didn't get
Speaker 4: off to a good start. So uh what happened was
Speaker 4: we had a couple of incidents that just didn't sit
Speaker 4: with me, and we did a couple of these together,
Speaker 4: and I said, you know what, for the witness, he's
Speaker 4: the chief, I'm not going to win this. So I
Speaker 4: put a paper and then I went to actually a
Speaker 4: funny story. I put a paper in every truck in
Speaker 4: ham except fourteen truck for a friend of mine, Denny Martin,
Speaker 4: was a cover camp. He was going to get the spot.
Speaker 4: So who was it? Home of Bishop?
Speaker 6: Was?
Speaker 4: I guess he was the chief of department. Then I'm home,
Speaker 4: get a call. My wife says, uh, there's a chief
Speaker 4: Bishop on the phone. Somebody's breaking my balls.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I pick up the phone. Yeah, chief Bishop, Yeah you know.
Speaker 11: Oh yeah, oh oh oh, I have a paper here.
Speaker 4: You put in all these trucks in Harlem. I say yes, sir.
Speaker 4: He says, would you like fourteen truck which I didn't
Speaker 4: put in for I said no, no, no, a friend
Speaker 4: of mine, A friend of mine. Denny Martin's going there.
Speaker 4: He says, Denny Martin is not going there. Do you
Speaker 4: want it? Yes or no?
Speaker 6: Yes?
Speaker 4: So he's okay. Click. So I call up Denny Martin.
Speaker 5: All Denny, what happened? Yeah? What the hell's going on?
Speaker 4: Reggie Julius was in the true Batanian you know, the
Speaker 4: Jewish brothers. Reggie they've both been both been captains over
Speaker 4: in Brooklyn. But Reggie was a Batan chief for the twelve.
Speaker 4: So Reggie and Denny for some reason, Denny was a
Speaker 4: great guy. Reggie is a great guy. They had a
Speaker 4: big blowout and Reggie told Denny, you're not coming here.
Speaker 4: So I go to fourteen Truck and now I'm working
Speaker 4: with Reggie, who was a passer. He kept saying you
Speaker 4: had a chain on him. He said, don't forget boys,
Speaker 4: I'm the head, and they gat, no, you're.
Speaker 6: Here, we got You're good. I have a picture of that.
Speaker 6: I had the picture of you.
Speaker 4: He used to say that like every tour he was.
Speaker 4: He was a fun guy.
Speaker 5: Is that you there on the left, that skinny guy.
Speaker 4: I'm looking at a picture of fourteen truck right now?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Is that you're on the left.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, that's me. Yeah, that's me on the left,
Speaker 4: Bill Bruce next to me. It was like a scratch
Speaker 4: golfer Bruce. The third guy, Mike McMahon, he's God rest
Speaker 4: his soul, very good friend of mine, your best cooking
Speaker 4: the fire department, and uh that's Bruce Bruce got to
Speaker 4: see it. Next to him.
Speaker 6: You get the little rug roun in the background.
Speaker 4: Who that.
Speaker 5: What? What was it like with the hundred foot towel ladder?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I used to bring my kid in. Fact, Reggie and
Speaker 4: I brought our kids in together. That both the kids
Speaker 4: in the bucket. But the third guy there, Mike McMahon,
Speaker 4: the guy two over for me too to my left.
Speaker 4: Two guys over. H Mike and I were carpool when
Speaker 4: I was a twenty six truck. I used to car
Speaker 4: pool Mike. He was in fourteen, so we had been
Speaker 4: friends for a long time. And then he ended up
Speaker 4: being my shauffeur, which was great. It was a great guy.
Speaker 4: And then he he could have been a chef at
Speaker 4: any restaurant in Man. That and I'm like kidding, he
Speaker 4: was fabulous. What are you still there?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Yeah, we got you.
Speaker 4: Oh okay, I came back.
Speaker 5: Yeah, what was it like driving around in that rig?
Speaker 4: Well, you know, it was a pain, he asked, because
Speaker 4: all the buffs on Saturday, the goddamn bus would pull
Speaker 4: up two buses.
Speaker 5: And you could get the rig out.
Speaker 4: Buffs and they want said and they wanted to look
Speaker 4: then this whatever. I forget what we were. Yeah, it
Speaker 4: was no, it was little war was It was a
Speaker 4: little different anyway. I had his own pump.
Speaker 5: It was an lt I right right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the rig had its own pump on it. So
Speaker 4: they get off the rig and they all of course,
Speaker 4: they all bring you know, donuts and ship and all
Speaker 4: that stuff. And then they would ask questions. And I
Speaker 4: remember a guy company, see me, can you tell me
Speaker 4: the RPMs on it? I'm looking at them. You got
Speaker 4: the wrong guy.
Speaker 5: I just get on the rig, bro, That's all. I was.
Speaker 4: How many r pms? And that I don't give you.
Speaker 5: I don't know about the rigs man.
Speaker 4: That was the pain, he asked for that. They all
Speaker 4: the busts are there all the time. But I mean
Speaker 4: they were nice people.
Speaker 5: But it easy to get through the streets with it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it was. Yeah, even though it wasn't a tiller. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean the street. Yeah, I mean sometimes you have
Speaker 4: a problem. But in fact, when I when I first
Speaker 4: got the twenty six too, we had a fifty three
Speaker 4: American in the France, by the way, because I had
Speaker 4: seven years on the job. Then about Ray Brown, maybe
Speaker 4: the the tiller man, I had never driven a tiller,
Speaker 4: but he's you're the senior. I was like, for seven years,
Speaker 4: I was almost a senior guy in the company. And
Speaker 4: so he said, we had the crazy show for Danny Harrison. Man,
Speaker 4: he's go down those side streets with all those kids.
Speaker 4: And I kept thinking, God, almighty, we're going to hit somebody.
Speaker 4: And all you could do is hold the week and
Speaker 4: just helped me went straight.
Speaker 3: I think he's a monster.
Speaker 4: Oh that's a big I think that that's after I
Speaker 4: was there. I think, there, that's cheek.
Speaker 5: That was a single truck.
Speaker 4: No, no, we had the thirty five engineer and yeah,
Speaker 4: we had the trouble right on Third Avenue, right third
Speaker 4: twenty fourth, yeah.
Speaker 5: Right, and the single engine was around the corner or
Speaker 5: something right.
Speaker 4: Well, that was thirty six engine who was originally on
Speaker 4: Park Avenue in a in a house that was in
Speaker 4: a building that was rented by the city. They didn't
Speaker 4: own it, and fourteen truck was on the twenty fifth
Speaker 4: street and the old time fire house was the final staircase.
Speaker 4: When they made the new fires they moved fourteen in
Speaker 4: the thirty five had been on an nineteenth street by themselves,
Speaker 4: so they moved the both of us together on twenty
Speaker 4: fourth street, and they moved thirty six engine to the
Speaker 4: quarters of one hundred twenty fifth Street because the person
Speaker 4: had owned that building. The stipulation was that we could
Speaker 4: stay a firehouse as long as the city could keep
Speaker 4: it if they kept it to the fire house. So
Speaker 4: they moved thirty six in there to keep it as
Speaker 4: the fire house, and then they disbanded thirty six, which
Speaker 4: I found tough to believe. There were such a great
Speaker 4: such a great company. There's ex engine and man they
Speaker 4: worked their rare shop back in the in the seventies.
Speaker 4: But you know things happened.
Speaker 7: Yeah, which which way was most of the work when
Speaker 7: you were when you were when you went out, were
Speaker 7: you going north?
Speaker 5: Were you going west? Like where we served.
Speaker 4: Most of the work was going But that going to
Speaker 4: twenty six truck was first till whether the problem was
Speaker 4: more trouble would achieved.
Speaker 5: The problem was, I see a reccurring theme here.
Speaker 4: Third Avenue goes north, but all of most of our
Speaker 4: boxes we had to go south. So be in a
Speaker 4: former number twenty six. I didn't want twenty six truck
Speaker 4: to beat me in. So when I went out the door,
Speaker 4: I Charles Trump, right, we'll go pat you on track.
Speaker 4: We'll just get the traffic out.
Speaker 5: Of the way, which yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: So there's one chief we call a toothpick. He says,
Speaker 4: you cannot go against traffic that's out. Well I don't saying.
Speaker 4: So he's working, I'm working. We get to run rapped up,
Speaker 4: he said. The mics go right, So now we're going down.
Speaker 4: We get a man down to about one hundred and
Speaker 4: fifteenth Street and here's the chief out in the moon.
Speaker 4: I got the fire were supposed to wear the boxes
Speaker 4: like on the street. We'll just stop, Mike stop. We stopped. Chief.
Speaker 4: Where's the fire? He says, are you going against? I?
Speaker 4: Just where's the fire? Are you going? My goats? So
Speaker 4: we take off. He's standing like. So now we come
Speaker 4: back and uh so the engine knew what was going on.
Speaker 4: So they're backing quarters. They're all around the house. Wats desk.
Speaker 4: We pull up. He's out on the sidewalk. Wait. So
Speaker 4: I get up the ring. I walk over and he says,
Speaker 4: A Martin is a chief when I'm going to a fire,
Speaker 4: don't ever stop me like that again. And I walked
Speaker 4: past her. It was like, whoa.
Speaker 6: It almost sounds like somebody's finger poking somebody.
Speaker 7: I thought this, you know, I thought this hallm thing
Speaker 7: in the Bronx. You know, I thought everything was like
Speaker 7: honey Dory up there. I don't know what's happening with
Speaker 7: these chiefs over there. I don't know what's going on.
Speaker 7: I thought they were nice.
Speaker 5: Guy.
Speaker 4: This guy was a little different.
Speaker 5: He was a little PONGOOLI yeah, guy.
Speaker 4: I thought it was you go first.
Speaker 3: No no, no, no, no, no, no, you go first.
Speaker 4: That's not Brooklyn. Brooklyn, get the hell out.
Speaker 5: Of I'm running ran you off the road.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay.
Speaker 3: If we're getting a head on collision, I'm getting in
Speaker 3: there before you.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, man, that's crazy stuff. I hope they're still
Speaker 4: not doing that. I don't know, but a.
Speaker 6: Little bit did that little little taste.
Speaker 4: If we did that in Manhattan. If you a phrase, dude,
Speaker 4: you got it. We show him coming. We stopped.
Speaker 7: Let them go, you know, like three blocks away.
Speaker 4: If we saw him coming, we stopped.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we wouldn't go.
Speaker 4: We wouldn't go. Ahead of now.
Speaker 3: Gonna they were fifty feet away in the world turns
Speaker 3: right in front of you.
Speaker 9: You know about what both bridges like, squeezing into the.
Speaker 5: Blox like this, you get out and you punch the ship.
Speaker 4: Out of the guys.
Speaker 3: Yeah that this old school mentality.
Speaker 5: Roof yea, yeah, I like it. Watch How did you
Speaker 5: like being a captain chief?
Speaker 4: I tell you, as I said, I loved every rank
Speaker 4: I was in. I mean, fireman, Firefighter was great, Lieutenant
Speaker 4: was great, Captain was great. But I'll tell you becoming
Speaker 4: a chief at the time I became a chief in
Speaker 4: eighty six, it was like dying going to heaven because
Speaker 4: no one bothered You could do whatever the hell you wanted.
Speaker 4: The deputies never bothered you at all. It was great,
Speaker 4: It was really really I really enjoyed it. I took
Speaker 4: advantage of it. I have to say I did a
Speaker 4: little traveling.
Speaker 5: As a third battalion that you got that spot you
Speaker 5: went had a whole time. Huh uh.
Speaker 4: Well, I actually covered five years in the division because
Speaker 4: I wanted to go to twenty six battalion. My old firehouse,
Speaker 4: nineteen truck and so I was waiting and then it
Speaker 4: opened up and they gave it to this little strip
Speaker 4: Jim Healy, he's probably listening. He had been a fireman
Speaker 4: and fifty engine and forty one engine. Great guy. But
Speaker 4: he uh, he told Van and he says, I'm going
Speaker 4: to be a deputy. I'm out of deputy, okay. So
Speaker 4: they gave him. They gave him two six times. So
Speaker 4: now I'm five years as a BC covering. The deputy
Speaker 4: says a time you're going to a battalion, no more covered.
Speaker 4: So I can't think of the guy's name she got.
Speaker 4: The deputy had a third division, nice guy, Irish guy.
Speaker 4: Well Ciddenly put me in the third division. So I
Speaker 4: was there from ninety one to oh one. That's a
Speaker 4: great fire house. A lot of great guys. Ended up
Speaker 4: with a lot of good friends that I'm still friends with.
Speaker 4: Firefighters man. We used to uh the Ghoul Richie Carlson.
Speaker 4: You ever heard the Ghoul? He was very famous guy.
Speaker 4: We had time yeah, down in Puerto Rico, and in
Speaker 4: ninety two we started going down there, and then Patti o'keeth,
Speaker 4: Jimmy Poppa and Mike Potchinski. We all go down for
Speaker 4: a week in Puerto Rico, stay at Richie's place and
Speaker 4: play golf. That was great, Yeah, that's great, but really
Speaker 4: really good place. I mean, unfortunately for the Third Battalion
Speaker 4: when I got there, they used to be very very
Speaker 4: busy at one time, Third Battalion, that's where they were
Speaker 4: when they were in the ninth Division, but it really
Speaker 4: slowed down. By the time I got there. The battalion
Speaker 4: wasn't doing much at all. I think. I think the
Speaker 4: busiest companies we had with ninety six and fifty four, then.
Speaker 5: Again who's Battalion three and with Chief again Battalion Yeah who.
Speaker 4: Oh we were in ninety four forty eight Oh right, yeah,
Speaker 4: yeah yeah on hunch Point Avenue. But it was really
Speaker 4: a good with a lot of a lot of really
Speaker 4: good guys. Not a hell of a lot of work,
Speaker 4: but there was still work around. Of course, we had
Speaker 4: hunts points, we at the market, so man as far
Speaker 4: as the food goes, I think we had eight or
Speaker 4: ten refrigerators in the finals. Wow. Once a week there
Speaker 4: was just a few bulk and fill up the refrigerators.
Speaker 4: When you commit the work what you want.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you just took whatever you want to it's great
Speaker 4: and put money in the Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah it was, isn't it weird now now?
Speaker 7: I well, you know, I talked to a lot of
Speaker 7: guys when I was getting I got on ninety three,
Speaker 7: I was, I had a lot of guys, went to
Speaker 7: ninety two, forty four, I had guys, went to all
Speaker 7: those you know, thirty three, seventy five, all those middle
Speaker 7: of the road, forty two engine.
Speaker 5: Now it seems like the work is it's higher than them.
Speaker 7: Now even them, the work is higher than them, like
Speaker 7: thirty two truck, right, the thirty two truck.
Speaker 5: And companies that thirty.
Speaker 4: Seven, even the numbers now.
Speaker 7: Fifty two and fifty two, all those companies. Thirty nine
Speaker 7: truck is doing a lot of work, right, I mean.
Speaker 4: That was a change.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was a camp.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but it's it's all changed. But those, I mean,
Speaker 4: all those numbers you mentioned all good companies. I mean
Speaker 4: they did their work during the time. But I remember
Speaker 4: when I was in nineteen we had always had a
Speaker 4: contest with Bob Fowls to captain at thirty one truck
Speaker 4: and who was busy at thirty one and nineteen, so
Speaker 4: we knew Fowls always cheap with the numbers. They don't
Speaker 4: twenty thirty. Uh, but we were both really very, very busy.
Speaker 4: So what they did was they fifty nine truck. They
Speaker 4: put fifty nine truck in the middle of us on
Speaker 4: Boston Road with eighty five engine, and in fact, Harry
Speaker 4: Mayans was five and eighty five at the time, and
Speaker 4: so that I mean, it didn't slow we still had
Speaker 4: plenty of work, but it took some of the pressure off, right,
Speaker 4: And then I would say within two or three years
Speaker 4: it had slowed down so much. Thirty one truck was
Speaker 4: now the slowest truck in the division, which is like
Speaker 4: unbelievab because they were the busiest truck in.
Speaker 5: The world forever, right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: And then they moved fifty nine uptown. I think they
Speaker 4: were with forty.
Speaker 5: Right, that was the green one. That was the green machine.
Speaker 5: The eighty five.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, my my brother sixty five Inns had had
Speaker 4: a green machine also.
Speaker 5: That's right, yeah, yeah, yeah, So they moved them uptown.
Speaker 4: I think they went him with forty three engine. I'll
Speaker 4: tell you a fort Lee story, you know, the Fort Lee,
Speaker 4: a fort Lee story. No, well, uh, working fifty nine
Speaker 4: has already lead uptown. Now they get a job. So
Speaker 4: they we get to okay, you're relocating the fifty nine engine. Okay,
Speaker 4: we get on, we get up. We're going across the
Speaker 4: crossbox and get a call ten to two back the quarters.
Speaker 4: So I said to the shuffle, well, just go across
Speaker 4: the GW we'll make it your turn. So we had
Speaker 4: the rearmount and this guy, Joe Selly, was in the
Speaker 4: phone booth. That's on the phone boy. So we're going
Speaker 4: across the bridge and I hear he's banging on the
Speaker 4: side of the lean. Joe, what's the matter? He should
Speaker 4: going to Jersey. Yeah, that's right. You go across the bridge. Riage.
Speaker 4: We go across the bridge. We're gonna make a U turn.
Speaker 4: We get over there and there's three or four yellow
Speaker 4: highway trucks Fort Lee, just like New York City Yellow
Speaker 4: same way. Ten guys standing around watching one guy work.
Speaker 5: That hasn't changed much.
Speaker 3: Put a cup of coffee in her hands.
Speaker 4: So I said, pull up, I said, listen, is a
Speaker 4: firehouse around here? I said, yeah, you're down about two blocks. Maker.
Speaker 4: I grew up the hill. You'll see it, says I
Speaker 4: think Steve Corbo was driving. I see, let's let's let's
Speaker 4: take it right up there.
Speaker 6: We get up to the top of the hillerator, the
Speaker 6: drive down to this depression.
Speaker 4: It was about ten days or huge firehouse, huge fire.
Speaker 4: So uh, we drive down. We have we have a
Speaker 4: spare rig. It looks like a piece of ship. I
Speaker 4: mean really a piece of ship. It was powerful. We
Speaker 4: were all dressed in rags. We don't know. Beautiful. I
Speaker 4: look in there's nobody. There's ship just staying. The entourage
Speaker 4: comes back about eight ten griggs. They want to run.
Speaker 5: One better looking than they other.
Speaker 4: Oh, beautiful, So they stopped the rig. They look him
Speaker 4: down and a couple of guys get out and they're
Speaker 4: looking down at us. So one guy walks down. He
Speaker 4: was an officer one race. He says, uh, but what
Speaker 4: are you guys doing here? He said, you had a job.
Speaker 4: So they relocated as Paul the relocated the fire. The
Speaker 4: FDNY O that they come down. We backed the rig
Speaker 4: in one of the bays there, too, took pictures, because
Speaker 4: of course they had a photographer with them, took pictures.
Speaker 4: They invited us in. They had this botty you couldn't
Speaker 4: believe right, yeah, you believe it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so he's we said.
Speaker 4: About a half hour we left. But it was the
Speaker 4: funny thing was Tony Alba, who was the captain of
Speaker 4: nineteen truck. Then he would have been fireming and rescue.
Speaker 4: I left you to Tony. He was the captain of
Speaker 4: one nine chuck to I think. So Tony's mother was
Speaker 4: lived in North Bronx. She was sick. So Tony used
Speaker 4: to take the rig when he was working visit his mother.
Speaker 4: So they called him city White Alba, I commit to work,
Speaker 4: and Alvia says to me, okay, what's the ship Fortley,
Speaker 4: New Jersey. As a Tony, I'm known as Adams State Martin.
Speaker 4: One of the guys in nineteen truck, Teddy Maguire on
Speaker 4: the bar in Long Beach called Chauncey's and you guys ever, yeah,
Speaker 4: of course I live in Long Beach. Yeah great. We
Speaker 4: used to be there all the time, right on right
Speaker 4: on the beach. So I said, I tell you what, Tony,
Speaker 4: you take the rink the Chaunceys and that tops me.
Speaker 4: That's bullshit. That's not fair as well, that's the deal.
Speaker 4: You gotta go to Chancey's or I am I'm the winner. Yeah, bro,
Speaker 4: you got to knock out the champion.
Speaker 3: Bro, you just can't beat him on point.
Speaker 7: But Mikey Millner, Mikey Milner said that it's still in
Speaker 7: It's still in the firehouse.
Speaker 5: Of the US kid, I guess, yeah.
Speaker 6: I mean, I'm trying to find something on it. I
Speaker 6: could trying to find it. There's no luck. I've been looking.
Speaker 4: You talk about the picture.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm trying to find something, but I only found
Speaker 6: this green truck from AFT.
Speaker 5: I'm trying to find something that's.
Speaker 4: My brother's company sixty five, So that's sixty it's.
Speaker 6: Sixty five because there's sixty five, and then there is
Speaker 6: this sixty five, which is another Yeah.
Speaker 4: I'm a picture of us in Fort Lee. It's still
Speaker 4: in the sitting room in nineteen I know that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's what he was saying.
Speaker 4: It's still there.
Speaker 5: All right. So here's the question. Chief.
Speaker 7: Let me ask you, if you had to pick one
Speaker 7: place that you could go back to work today and
Speaker 7: it would be the same.
Speaker 5: Way, would you do would you be.
Speaker 4: That's not a fair question. Answer?
Speaker 9: Oh, well, you know, but if you're not fair, Yeah,
Speaker 9: and you're a young fuck, you're young.
Speaker 4: Love every place I worked I'm.
Speaker 6: Gonna give you a little inspiration.
Speaker 5: Turn out, Martin.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna have to say, nineteen truck, Really I had
Speaker 4: I had the most well. I had a lot of
Speaker 4: fires in nineteen truck. I had great experiences there. I
Speaker 4: still have a ton of friends from nineteen But I
Speaker 4: mean I have a ton of friends of all the
Speaker 4: all the firehouses. It's not like the others aren't good.
Speaker 4: Just something about man, I gotcha, I got you. It's
Speaker 4: tough to pick. I put you on great, great, great firehouse.
Speaker 4: So what made you want to pack it? In twenty
Speaker 4: five years? I still miss it? Very honest. Wow, what
Speaker 4: made you want to retire? Three quarters? I'll do it
Speaker 4: every time I told my lamit, I told my labelm
Speaker 4: and a job, and I remember I remember getting the
Speaker 4: MRI and I come out in the car and I
Speaker 4: opened up. I'm sitting in the car looking it's just
Speaker 4: torn labors. I can't be That's sounds like three quarters
Speaker 4: to me. Yeah, he was like three quarters.
Speaker 5: Did you ever think you were going to do forty years?
Speaker 5: Did you ever think I never thought I.
Speaker 4: Was going to get three courts? I tell you, I
Speaker 4: was actually free my whole time in the career. I
Speaker 4: was very very lucky. You know, everybody gets hurt in
Speaker 4: the five of them, you know I was. I was
Speaker 4: just very lucky guy. I never thought I was going
Speaker 4: to get three quarters, but but I did. What was
Speaker 4: the last question he asked?
Speaker 5: Forty years? Ever think you were going to do?
Speaker 4: When they put me out? I went down to see
Speaker 4: how Connley Al Connley, so Al says to me, yeah,
Speaker 4: you got to get out December thirty first. I said, no,
Speaker 4: how I want to stay into two because like, come
Speaker 4: on sixty two, because you've got to get out.
Speaker 5: The thirty first because all your overtime.
Speaker 4: I was in my fortieth year, but I got out
Speaker 4: December thirty.
Speaker 5: How fast did that go? Chief? Forty years?
Speaker 4: It went fast? And yeah, I mean it's amazing. But
Speaker 4: I'm blessed. Memories the last forever, you know, just wonderful memories.
Speaker 4: So I was very fortunate. I worked with some really
Speaker 4: great people. Well, Vinnie dam was the captain of fifty
Speaker 4: eight when I was there, Oh my, yeah, great, I
Speaker 4: mean great, great people. John o'reagan was the captain of
Speaker 4: twenty six. Ray Brown it was my lieutenant, and twitter mean,
Speaker 4: just wonderful people. I worked with, great deputies in the
Speaker 4: sixth Division. Bill Burke sec.
Speaker 5: Ceiling was in nineteen right at that time? Was he ceiling? Yeah?
Speaker 5: Was he? I remember him. He was the captain of
Speaker 5: nineteen He came after me.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's the captain in nineteen.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I worked.
Speaker 4: I was thinking about beating him up, and I'm gonna
Speaker 4: hold off on that man. He's with the golfer. He's
Speaker 4: a great guy too.
Speaker 5: Hey, God, they got some pictures. Show the chief some pictures?
Speaker 6: All right, do you want? I have a lot of
Speaker 6: He has a lot of outings, So yeah, look at it.
Speaker 6: We'll get to those. We'll get to he has involved.
Speaker 4: That means I didn't want to show you the fire.
Speaker 5: Oh look at that who It looks looks like uh.
Speaker 4: That's the picture Tom Kilker had in his lock up.
Speaker 4: Because Kilko is a deput in the sixth I never
Speaker 4: wore a fire gear and we go to a fire
Speaker 4: and because he was the commander, he had to wear
Speaker 4: his fire gear and you have the helmet on with
Speaker 4: the trap. And he looked at me and said, Tom,
Speaker 4: can't you put something on? It looks like you're going
Speaker 4: to a fire. Hey, Tom, do you know how silly
Speaker 4: you look? With that chin strap he was. He was
Speaker 4: another great guy. Tom, Tom kilker Man, awesome, great guy.
Speaker 6: Let me go to I'm just gonna bring this one
Speaker 6: up here really quick.
Speaker 4: Just yeah, I think that there's my time a day. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: bring up boys from fourteen truck gave me the helmet
Speaker 4: when I got promoted.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I also have I just found this one too.
Speaker 6: It was just sent to me.
Speaker 4: Uh Bob, God bless hum. So you love that one man?
Speaker 6: Yeah, all right, here we go.
Speaker 4: I can't remember who the chief was.
Speaker 5: I remember that's a.
Speaker 4: Look at his face, like.
Speaker 6: All right, so we're going to tell something about group shot.
Speaker 6: We'll start from twenty six nineteen that you have here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's uh well, all the boys from twenty six Tom, Joe, Curry,
Speaker 4: Steve I came, remember last name Steve, Mike, My even
Speaker 4: ended up with. Mike was Bill Stewart's son of law.
Speaker 4: He ended up as a battalion chief, and myself. Bill
Speaker 4: Stewart was one of the senior guys in the twenty
Speaker 4: six truck. Great guy just passed away last year. I think,
Speaker 4: oh goodness, ninety five. Yeah, that's his that's his son
Speaker 4: in law. I was gonna say a ball guy. But
Speaker 4: I'm balled there also, so yeah.
Speaker 6: It's overrated, it's over all right. We got another one
Speaker 6: for you.
Speaker 4: And that's who it was. Oh yeah, Joe, oh shit
Speaker 4: man eighty eight engine. He was in twenty six truck
Speaker 4: and cho that's Joe Pintell, myself and Joe Dunovan twenty
Speaker 4: six truck. Then, yeah, that must have been a luncheon.
Speaker 6: They had nice and we got another one for you
Speaker 6: a little. I tried to blow some of these up
Speaker 6: without ruling the picture when I get money in there.
Speaker 4: That's another I forget the Battalionsi's name, he was there.
Speaker 4: It was a luncheon. And that's the guy kneeling down
Speaker 4: all the way in the left is Tim Hogan. He
Speaker 4: was the captain of fifty eight. He is a battan
Speaker 4: chief now and all the old senior guys from twenty
Speaker 4: six truck in that picture.
Speaker 5: I think that was the same day he actually go
Speaker 5: to the firehouse and have lunch there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they had a big lunch for us. Yeah they sponsored. Yeah,
Speaker 4: Tim Hogan was the guy that invited us. Yeah, oh sweet,
Speaker 4: he and the captain. Oh, the guy all the way
Speaker 4: on the right kneeling he's the he was the captain
Speaker 4: of twenty six. Nice guy too. I can't remember his name.
Speaker 4: I don't know if he got promoted yet.
Speaker 6: Good guys, All right, let's another twenty six truck reunion
Speaker 6: for you.
Speaker 5: Look at the dust in that picture.
Speaker 6: I was gonna say, don't fuck anybody.
Speaker 4: Well, the guy all the way in the right sitting
Speaker 4: Joe Donovan next to him, was still with the ninety
Speaker 4: five year old just passed away. Oh bless great guy.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Uh Donny, Haye, did you work with Donny?
Speaker 4: Donny had Now I didn't work with don I know
Speaker 4: don but he was the twenty six truck guy.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And John Henry in the back there with the purple
Speaker 4: shirt on fifty eight engine, and Dennis Callipy who just
Speaker 4: passed away right next to him. Unfortunately, the chief coops.
Speaker 5: That doesn't want to come on. What's his name on
Speaker 5: the top left there, chief.
Speaker 4: Top left top fluff his hate next to Haye.
Speaker 5: You knuckle ahead.
Speaker 4: I can't see what I said.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I have to.
Speaker 6: I can try to blow it up if you want.
Speaker 6: A few man, take me a couple of minutes.
Speaker 4: And they get a ticket trick.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's hating the checking shirt. It's uh. He went
Speaker 5: to rescue too.
Speaker 4: Uh Fisher there too, is there?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I couldn't. I'm shut too. There's a lot of
Speaker 5: dust in that picture.
Speaker 4: Chief at that picture says.
Speaker 6: That Helmet could cough or if he could talk, sorry,
Speaker 6: it would cough. All right, is gonna love this one?
Speaker 6: Here we go boom.
Speaker 4: He still had a good record that night.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, very nice. All right, we have a little
Speaker 6: moment here.
Speaker 4: Yeah. That was the Legion that had a special with
Speaker 4: the Met game and I love it there sitting there.
Speaker 7: Still you're still uh you're still participating, Chief, that's good.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah yeah.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 4: They're honoring me at the Honor Legion for something I
Speaker 4: don't know what the hell I did, but I don't
Speaker 4: know what. They call it. Humanitarian Awarde, Nobel Peace Prize,
Speaker 4: something like that. Yeah, not very nice. And the Animal
Speaker 4: Society gave me the green Jacket about three years ago.
Speaker 4: That was nice. Wow at their at their Yeah, that
Speaker 4: was very.
Speaker 6: Nice, nice, very nice.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's another Chief of the Department and h Timmy
Speaker 4: Corilla Colla I think it is, And that was over
Speaker 4: in Staten and Linda Thompson, who is a wonderful person.
Speaker 4: Any of you guys know Linda. She takes care of
Speaker 4: all the senior firefighters and the veterans. She does some
Speaker 4: wonderful job. And this guy Anthony's first birthday over in
Speaker 4: Staten Island run a number of those for real old timers.
Speaker 4: I think Anthony passed away.
Speaker 3: I think this year all that I saw it in
Speaker 3: the paper.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's gone, yeah, wow, that's terrible. He loves to
Speaker 4: get that you line. This is ninety four and forty eight.
Speaker 4: A lot of troublemakers in this picture.
Speaker 5: Richie Massie is there. I know Richie. Yeah, I was
Speaker 5: in once seventeen with him.
Speaker 4: Yeah, a lot of a lot of Yeah, a lot
Speaker 4: of my golfing buddies are in there.
Speaker 6: Golfing. All right, all right here, yeah we'll go we'll
Speaker 6: go back a little historic here.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, well we called it the Oys back in
Speaker 4: those days, which is the August actually trainings.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Now it's flipped, Mike Milner call it.
Speaker 6: That's what I was gonna say. It sounds like a
Speaker 6: little uh, a little juicy.
Speaker 5: Yeah. There's a lot of chops in that picture. Man
Speaker 5: looking at the chops.
Speaker 4: Yes, anybody knows that Jack McCormick, who became a staff chief,
Speaker 4: is the fifth guy from the right. He had long
Speaker 4: red hair at that time.
Speaker 5: Oh I see him.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I'm just below him.
Speaker 5: Oh I see you, Yeah, I see you.
Speaker 6: That's crazy.
Speaker 4: Look any different way the chops.
Speaker 5: I like the Chops.
Speaker 4: Only fifty two years ago.
Speaker 5: You got a shirt and everything looks like you at home.
Speaker 4: He's got the platform choose. Oh yeah, bell bottomed jeans.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's ak a picture.
Speaker 4: That's the boys some Uh that's Eddie Garretty right next
Speaker 4: to me there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's Pully Baldwin, Paul Baldwin.
Speaker 4: Oh is that I'm all the way to the low
Speaker 4: and the left, the way to the left. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 4: I can't remember.
Speaker 5: The guy looks familiar too. Yeah, yeah, nice.
Speaker 4: All right, here we go. I'm gonna make Kilker happy.
Speaker 4: That picture. I was wearing fire again. This is uh
Speaker 4: my national gun out that Westhampton Beach, which I joined
Speaker 4: in seventy eight, and I ended up as the first
Speaker 4: sergeant for the last thirteen years. It was a great job.
Speaker 4: I worked for Hey, Susan Figueroa, who was a he
Speaker 4: became a full colonel, but he was a little Puerto
Speaker 4: Rican guy who lived around the corner from my firehouse
Speaker 4: on Seneca Revenue from the third Italian. Oh wow, just
Speaker 4: a great guy. Yeah, great guy. And this is We
Speaker 4: used to play softball once a week. Well it was
Speaker 4: one month, one weekend the month we used to go
Speaker 4: out there and we always played softball. And I guess
Speaker 4: it was Saturday afternoon at four o'clock. That was the
Speaker 4: end of the hour. Was end of the four o'clock.
Speaker 4: There's a bunch of firemen and cops in that picture,
Speaker 4: of course.
Speaker 5: Cops, all busters. Imagine that.
Speaker 6: All busters.
Speaker 5: That's great.
Speaker 6: We were blessed with a couple of photos for some
Speaker 6: of our guys from the chat. Mister Tom, give us
Speaker 6: a couple extra photos. He'll share with you real quick.
Speaker 4: That's Tom rap On that I'm talking to there, Chris
Speaker 4: King right, And I don't know. I don't know what
Speaker 4: this was. I guess it was a giant. I don't
Speaker 4: know where my helmet is. You got the code on
Speaker 4: all right?
Speaker 5: The two bagger.
Speaker 6: Man the little school suburban there, buddy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm trying to see what.
Speaker 6: I have to blow it up? Wish is wish the software?
Speaker 6: Let us do it?
Speaker 3: Is this getting bigger on your end than just don't lie?
Speaker 6: That's getting big?
Speaker 3: Is that taking the full screen for you, it is
Speaker 3: a full screen.
Speaker 6: Yeah, but this is one of the full screen. Actually
Speaker 6: take a screech. No, it won't be for them, actually
Speaker 6: you actually uh yeah, it wouldn't be full screen unless
Speaker 6: you did this. But it's because we're in it. It
Speaker 6: doesn't work.
Speaker 4: Ah ah ha.
Speaker 6: And then the last photo we have.
Speaker 5: Is wow, that's a nice picture.
Speaker 4: Man again you have that on your front. Chief. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm not saying what you're seeing.
Speaker 6: Hold on now, can you can you see us?
Speaker 4: He went out, where do you go?
Speaker 3: Okay, come back, listen to the old school health and
Speaker 3: safety tip.
Speaker 6: While I was gone, Yeah for sure, let me get there.
Speaker 3: All right, here we go.
Speaker 1: The First Responder Center for Excellence is a not for
Speaker 1: profit organization dedicated to protecting the lives and livelihoods.
Speaker 6: Of first responders.
Speaker 1: Their education and research initiatives aim to bring greater awareness
Speaker 1: and understanding the challenges to the health, safety, and well
Speaker 1: being of firefighters, EMS personnel, and other first responders too.
Speaker 1: They are an affiliate of the National Fallen Firefighter Foundations.
Speaker 3: All right, Tonight's the old school health and safety tip
Speaker 3: is there are many simple, no cost steps fire fighters
Speaker 3: to take to manage their risk of cancer, such as
Speaker 3: cleaning the inside liner of your helmet. Simple, you don't
Speaker 3: want the big C. So you know, clean is the
Speaker 3: new salty.
Speaker 5: Take care of your health.
Speaker 3: That's what I'm saying about.
Speaker 4: Oh here he is, got jump off again that damn thing.
Speaker 4: That's all right, We got you now, Okay.
Speaker 6: Leave it just like that, You leave it just like that,
Speaker 6: a little bit left to be okay.
Speaker 4: Oh okay, I want to tell you a story, one
Speaker 4: story I meant to tell you about. I'm getting metal
Speaker 4: and can you hear me?
Speaker 6: Yes, yes, right now we can don't move, you can
Speaker 6: hear me, gotcha?
Speaker 4: Now, okay, all right. So nineteen eighty three, I'm getting
Speaker 4: the metal. So my dhorry, Hello, you're good. That was
Speaker 4: my bread.
Speaker 6: I would get myself set up or something gone, So.
Speaker 4: Sorry, chief, go ahead, take away, all right. So, uh
Speaker 4: so it's metal Day, so I'm gonna get a medal.
Speaker 4: And the guys had my reliversine for my family. So
Speaker 4: my sister in law who lived up to Katona, she
Speaker 4: had four kids, so I said, come on down and
Speaker 4: go to Meddle day. So she comes. She ends up
Speaker 4: at the firehouse on the third Avenue. Fourteen truck and
Speaker 4: we had a throwing apparatus in quarters. So it was
Speaker 4: the summer time, so you don't need to throwing apparatus.
Speaker 4: So I go down and take all the shit out
Speaker 4: of the throwing apparatus except the oil burner. You know,
Speaker 4: throwing apparatus for young guys to use those to throw
Speaker 4: out the hydrants, which doesn't happen anymore anyway. I pull
Speaker 4: all the shit out of the throwing apparatus except the
Speaker 4: oil burner, which was attached. I put in folding chairs. Mary,
Speaker 4: Jane and the four kids get in. I get in
Speaker 4: the front seat. Now, Enio mount Pelley was the battalion
Speaker 4: chief and Trump Pettang, wonderful guy. He's staying by the
Speaker 4: house watch. He's going down to middle day or so.
Speaker 4: All of a sudden I start driving out. I'm going
Speaker 4: past the house watch in your standing and he looks up.
Speaker 4: I'll see you down a chief. I let him to
Speaker 4: get his mouth. It was like wide open. He couldn't
Speaker 4: he couldn't believe I was I was leaving with the Florida.
Speaker 4: So bingo down the city hall he went. I parked
Speaker 4: the thing right there in my city hawk because it
Speaker 4: was fire above and apparatus and had a great day
Speaker 4: and then drove him back and breads outside the box.
Speaker 9: Stick love it.
Speaker 4: It worked that well. It worked that well, and let's
Speaker 4: see what else. Or I did the old sneeze thing
Speaker 4: you guys familiar when you put water on your hand,
Speaker 4: you walk behind somebody and you make a seat. Yeah,
Speaker 4: like walk into the kitchen. It's a brand new lieutenant.
Speaker 4: So it was twenty guys sitting at the table. So
Speaker 4: I walk up behind him. He's got his meal. I
Speaker 4: give him the old sneeze, So I'm sorry little and.
Speaker 6: He was.
Speaker 4: He didn't look around, but everybody's staring at her at
Speaker 4: the table and he doesn't know if he should eat.
Speaker 4: Is so that that trick was still working. Has an
Speaker 4: old trick, but no German. Uh. My grandfather was a
Speaker 4: Battanian chief on a job, but he died in nineteen
Speaker 4: twenty six. He worked and I mentioned anybody, I don't know.
Speaker 6: What we're looking at right now?
Speaker 5: His nose.
Speaker 6: Oh there we go.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So he worked in I think it was the four
Speaker 4: to two or the four to three battalions. He died
Speaker 4: in nineteen twenty six, So there is a little history
Speaker 4: going back. Uh. I was I was a I was
Speaker 4: at twenty six trucks annual dinner dance, and I don't
Speaker 4: know where how we had it, and the phone rings
Speaker 4: and the and the guy was always say, were looking
Speaker 4: for a Lieutenant Martin, Yeah, that's me and Lieutenant scold
Speaker 4: Franks Scoldin, Yeah, we're both dear. Well you want on
Speaker 4: the phone? So was battanion chief and the fourteenth Battalion.
Speaker 4: That's where we were both covering. He calls up and says, look,
Speaker 4: it looks like a strike tomorrow. You guys have to
Speaker 4: go to fifty nine truck at six o'clock in the morning. Uh,
Speaker 4: all right, So we end up going to fifty nine
Speaker 4: truck six o'clock in the morning. We get in there, boys,
Speaker 4: got a big pot of soup going on the on
Speaker 4: the stove. All the signs and the strike signs are
Speaker 4: in the corner. Everybody's sitting around because no one thinks
Speaker 4: it's gonna happen. No one thinks it's gonna be strike.
Speaker 4: They're sitting around bullshiting coffee in the nine o'clock. Baby,
Speaker 4: the UFA is on strike. Well you could hear a
Speaker 4: pin drop, no one, No one could believe it. No
Speaker 4: one could believe, so UFA the union guys. All right, guys,
Speaker 4: grab the signs. So we got the signs. They went
Speaker 4: on the sidewalk started picketing and uh. That was the
Speaker 4: beginning of the strike. And it was ah, we had
Speaker 4: the two seven time was in with thirty one truck
Speaker 4: and eight. So the chief comes up, has a roll call.
Speaker 4: There's nine lieutenants and the captain in the firehouse. All
Speaker 4: the other guys are on the sidewalk on the picket line.
Speaker 4: So he says, we need somebody to drive the rig.
Speaker 4: Will you drive, he asked the captain. First captain says no,
Speaker 4: and he starts to think. It goes all the way
Speaker 4: down line. No no, no, no, no, no, takes the
Speaker 4: mark and it journally leaves cause back. About a half
Speaker 4: hour later, does the same thing. No no no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 4: takes the mark, leaves come back the third time. No no,
Speaker 4: no no, He says, I'm ordering all you guys out
Speaker 4: of the firehouse. So we all went out of the
Speaker 4: fire house and we started picketing with the guys. It
Speaker 4: was one of those things that he threw us out
Speaker 4: of the fire house and now there's nobody in the
Speaker 4: fire house. Of course, the strike ended three hours later,
Speaker 4: twelve o'clock. It was over. As soon as it ended,
Speaker 4: they transmitted the box around the corner. It was third alarm.
Speaker 4: The thing had been burned for an hour, so by
Speaker 4: the time we got there, it was a third alarm.
Speaker 4: You know, it was right around the corner. But that
Speaker 4: was a terrible, terrible day for the fire department.
Speaker 7: At a chief, a good friend of mine, uh asked
Speaker 7: me to ask you that he made a mistake.
Speaker 5: He called your house one time. He was looking for
Speaker 5: a different Tommy Martin.
Speaker 6: I'm going to get that better, remember, because I was
Speaker 6: trying to go back and find it about Eddie.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I played golf with Yeah.
Speaker 6: Make a little bit, little squirrel.
Speaker 5: Funny story said he was cursing your wife out my.
Speaker 4: Wife when I committed. I was covered in the in
Speaker 4: the fourteenth Battalion, and I commit the work next day
Speaker 4: and he comes always, Oh gee, dog, I'm so sorry.
Speaker 4: I just started laughing. I thought it was funny as well.
Speaker 4: But uh, my wife, my wife did didn't bother how
Speaker 4: much stuff funny?
Speaker 6: She took trooper, she was a trooper.
Speaker 4: She a trooper. If there's any other story, how much
Speaker 4: time we got we got twenty minutes about it.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, well I want to mention a few people. Let's see,
Speaker 4: I mentioned Owen's the band. Oh the band ninety four
Speaker 4: and forty eight with JP had a famous band that
Speaker 4: they would play in the back room and uh wow
Speaker 4: the band that's your hat, and of course we had. Yeah,
Speaker 4: Alvin has to be mentioned because what he did in
Speaker 4: training is just incredible. I mean, the ten years he
Speaker 4: was there turned that thing around. I mean it's it's
Speaker 4: an example very fire department in the country. Just a wonderful,
Speaker 4: wonderful guy and he goes everything very active and my mines. Uh,
Speaker 4: well he was there for a while. Mike is running
Speaker 4: the rock now.
Speaker 5: I think.
Speaker 4: Yes, it was fun in eighty five juries nineteen. And
Speaker 4: the other thing was, uh, I wanted to thank Mickey Conboy,
Speaker 4: who's the president of the U of the of the
Speaker 4: oh god, my brain of the honor allegian. Uh. He
Speaker 4: called me last week and as they said, they're gonna
Speaker 4: they're gonna honor me on October first. I thought that
Speaker 4: was very nice that he did that. Awesome.
Speaker 5: Yeah you go go, bradiest of all time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's been it's been a good run. I have
Speaker 4: to say that a good bun.
Speaker 5: How old are you know, Chief, uh seventy one?
Speaker 4: Oh no, eighty five?
Speaker 5: I was quick.
Speaker 4: Guy's got jokes, got jokes, jokes, dream at the consistent
Speaker 4: dream I have all ben Yeah, but very happy man.
Speaker 4: I have a significant Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he's trying to listen to it.
Speaker 5: I think that's why he keeps putting it by.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And there's a lot of firemen in that family. Our
Speaker 4: sister's married to uh our sister, and he's married to
Speaker 4: uh Jay Patton, who was the finement over in Brooklyn.
Speaker 4: I don't like to say that, but.
Speaker 3: Brooklyn.
Speaker 6: I don't know when he comes back, it might be
Speaker 6: the time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think something, Chief, and all three of us
Speaker 4: went in the Navy and none of us ever got
Speaker 4: shot at. We were in between the wars.
Speaker 6: Luck.
Speaker 7: Yeah, we're gonna do We're gonna do the old school
Speaker 7: tip of the day now because we're losing you a
Speaker 7: little bit, so we're just gonna do the the old
Speaker 7: school tips.
Speaker 5: Will just stand by for a second, all right.
Speaker 4: Okay, I'm getting log and plugging in.
Speaker 6: Okay, go ahead, yeah, plugging star, It's time for the wait.
Speaker 6: The os of good.
Speaker 4: Cheap.
Speaker 6: I'm going to bring you in real cloak boom take
Speaker 6: it away.
Speaker 4: Well, for me, I think the most important thing in
Speaker 4: the job today is the training. Uh you know, as
Speaker 4: I said, Galvin set it up and it's they have
Speaker 4: a great system over there, and there's so many different
Speaker 4: things that you can you can learn. Every day you
Speaker 4: can learn something new. I think it's very important the
Speaker 4: training that they stay with it. I mean it's it's
Speaker 4: still busy, they're still doing a lot of work, which
Speaker 4: is the best training you can get. But uh, to me,
Speaker 4: training is everything. So that's my tip of the day.
Speaker 3: Boys, excellent, Thank.
Speaker 4: You for sharing a very real stories with us. I
Speaker 4: love it.
Speaker 5: Pleasure it was.
Speaker 4: It was fun telling those stories.
Speaker 6: Anybody in trouble, no, no, no one one quick question,
Speaker 6: most shift or most tour with the most runs?
Speaker 5: How much? What was the most tung you had on
Speaker 5: the tour? Do you remember?
Speaker 4: Well? Yeah, twenty sixth tour we had over thirty one night.
Speaker 9: I know that.
Speaker 4: Wow, Oh god, okay, I mean we had a lot.
Speaker 4: There was a lot of bullshit, but we've always had
Speaker 4: a couple of jobs.
Speaker 6: You know, back in the day it was several a day,
Speaker 6: wasn't it on an average of what three to six d.
Speaker 4: My first tour that I ever had was a.
Speaker 5: No boy.
Speaker 4: Okay, on Christmas Eve, we had a fifth alarm, top
Speaker 4: floor lost the whole roof. It was about ten degrees
Speaker 4: out freezing. I ra asked off, we're there all night.
Speaker 4: So now it's like seven thirty in the morning. And
Speaker 4: his chief who just he just be leaving another chief,
Speaker 4: So he's just getting to the fire fires out, you know,
Speaker 4: we were keeping a little bit of fire going in
Speaker 4: the corner to stay warm. And he comes up. He says,
Speaker 4: a lieutenant, aren't you and your man up on the
Speaker 4: roof forgetting it?
Speaker 5: Chief?
Speaker 4: We're done? No, no, no, you start I want as
Speaker 4: a chief. We're not doing any more work. We're waiting
Speaker 4: for the day. Tour to me made you turny went down.
Speaker 4: So now we get relieved. I go home, spend some
Speaker 4: time with the family. It's Christmas day, go back to
Speaker 4: the fire house. We're still at the job. Back to
Speaker 4: the back to the job, freezing our balls off again
Speaker 4: that night. It was a terrible, terrible tool, just one
Speaker 4: of those things. Nobody got hurt, which was good, but
Speaker 4: that was like a typical top floor job boy you
Speaker 4: ended up the winter time. You froze your ass off.
Speaker 5: Nothing. Yeah, we have anything. You muted your knuckle bird?
Speaker 4: Were I get any money for this?
Speaker 5: By the way, check.
Speaker 3: Checks in the mail.
Speaker 4: Uh George Heary, the president of the Five Chiefs Association,
Speaker 4: and Rocco Rinaldi and uh yeah, I'm I'm I'm the
Speaker 4: second vice president, so I'm still active with that. But
Speaker 4: we just want to say thanks to all those guys,
Speaker 4: Isa and uh, Charlie Clark, all those.
Speaker 3: Guys trying to get Rocco to come on the show.
Speaker 3: Give them a little nudge.
Speaker 4: Well. Sad thing is we had the col founding Monday
Speaker 4: fights us col Founding which Rocco runs the Big Raffle.
Speaker 4: His mother died that day. A right. I was at
Speaker 4: the way because I'm going to the funeral tomorrow morning.
Speaker 4: She was ninety six, So I'll sign up.
Speaker 5: For sign the papers. We'll sign the papers for that
Speaker 5: to me too. Yeah.
Speaker 4: The only thing is is only fifteen years away. That's
Speaker 4: what scares me.
Speaker 3: Gods any shout outs.
Speaker 4: But no, no.
Speaker 6: I mentioned my niece earlier. I want to give a
Speaker 6: little shotow. She's been good to me, but we have
Speaker 6: to do something with her. And fireman and alcohol you
Speaker 6: know how you.
Speaker 4: Know cute coontenders too. They love it. Yeah, I want
Speaker 4: to I mentioned. I mentioned my brother jim Man. My
Speaker 4: brother Bob mart was a five usher started and one
Speaker 4: thirty two truck and sixty eight great guy.
Speaker 3: I just wanted to mention him. Sure, sure, yes, thank
Speaker 3: you kept it real.
Speaker 4: I enjoy I hope everybody enjoyed it. I talk with
Speaker 4: you guys telling the stories.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and I get of invitation next year for the
Speaker 6: boat trip.
Speaker 3: Second week in August. We take out a boat with
Speaker 3: all the guests.
Speaker 5: As we said to all the guys, wait, wait is
Speaker 5: it is?
Speaker 4: It? Is it free?
Speaker 5: Yes, it is.
Speaker 9: I'll be the right words for me, for me, baby,
Speaker 9: I'll pick I'll pick you up, chief, no problem.
Speaker 5: You don't even have to drive.
Speaker 3: All right, All right, guys, we will see you next Thursday.
Speaker 3: You have another fdi ony guy on join us. Until then.
Speaker 3: You know what I say, rough, what do I say?
Speaker 3: Stay long and go?
Speaker 5: Oh there you go, guys, we'll see it the big one. Everybody.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much. Yeah, thank you so much.
Speaker 6: Remember we're rolling heavy in South Florida. Stay salty, everybody,